EAGLE PASS, Texas — Daniel Bermudez’s family had fled Venezuela and were headed to the US to seek asylum when a freight train they were traveling through Mexico was stopped by immigration officials.
His wife tried to explain that her family had permission to go to the US.
Instead, they flew them to Mexico’s southern border as part of a surge in enforcement that US officials say has contributed to a sharp drop in illegal border crossings.
In addition to forcing migrants off the train, Mexico also continued flights and transported them to the southern part of the country and began flying back to Venezuela.
Although temporary, the drop in illegal crossings is welcome news for the White House.
President Joe Biden’s administration is locked in talks with Senate negotiators over blocking asylum and $110 billion in aid for Ukraine and Israel hangs in the balance.
Bermudez said his wife was separated from her family when he spoke to authorities while he gathered his stepsons and their belongings.
Texas Department of Public Safety teams with migrants in Eagle Pass, Texas on January 3, 2024. AP Photo/Eric Gay
He wanted to run, but his wife said they shouldn’t because they had followed procedure by making an appointment with US immigration authorities.
“I told him, ‘Don’t trust them. Let’s go to the brush,'” Bermudez said, adding that other migrants had fled. She recalled him telling her, “Why are they sending us back if we have an appointment?”
Last week, Bermudez, her stepson and two other relatives were waiting for her at a shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras as she boarded a bus home hoping to still make the date.
Mexico’s immigration agency sent at least 22 flights from its border region with the US to southern cities over the last 10 days of December, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data.
Migrants line up for processing after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico at Eagle Pass on January 4, 2024. AP Photo/Eric Gay
Most of them are from Piedras Negras, which is just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.
Mexico also conducted two evacuation flights to Venezuela with 329 migrants.
The stretch was punctuated by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Mexico City on December 28 to face an unprecedented crossing of the United States.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the financial shortfall that caused immigration agencies to delay deportations and other operations had been resolved. He did not provide details.
Arrests for illegal crossings into the US from Mexico fell to about 2,500 on Monday, down from more than 10,000 on several days in December, according to US authorities.
Mexican police patrol the border in Piedras Negras, Mexico on January 4, 2024. AP Photo/Eric Gay
In the Border Patrol’s busiest area, arrests totaled 13,800 in the seven days ending Friday, down 29% from 19,400 two weeks earlier, according to Tucson, Arizona, sector chief John Modlin.
The drop prompted US Customs and Border Protection to reopen the port of entry in Lukeville, Arizona, on Thursday after a month-long closure on the most direct route from Phoenix to its nearest coast.
The US also restored operations at Eagle Pass and three other locations.
Merchants in Eagle Pass, a town of about 30,000 people, saw sales experience a “huge spike” while a bridge was closed to vehicle traffic so border agents could be reassigned to help process immigrants, District Judge Maverick Ramsey English Cantu said.
“We survived almost everything that came from the Mexican side,” he said.
Last month, CBP resumed cargo crossings at Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, after a five-day shutdown that US officials said was in response to as many as 1,000 migrants riding a single train through Mexico before attempting to walk across the border.
In Piedras Negras on Thursday, the Casa del Migrante housed about 200 migrants, down from a recent high of 1,500.
Among them is Manuel Rodriguez, 40, who said his family will miss their appointment to seek asylum made through the US government’s CBP One application.
He said the appointment was registered with his father-in-law, who was sent back to Venezuela after the authorities boarded the bus they were on.
“Everything was in his name and he lost everything,” Rodriguez said.
Proposals being discussed by White House and Senate negotiators include new deportation authorities that would deny the right to seek asylum if illegal border crossings reach certain thresholds.
A guard stands guard at the border near Eagle Pass on January 3, 2024. AP Photo/Eric Gay
Any such authority would almost certainly depend on Mexico’s willingness to take back non-Mexicans who enter the US illegally, something it does now on a limited scale.
Mexico’s support is essential to shutting down Trump-era policies that forced 70,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in US immigration courts and to deny the right to seek asylum during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC, cautioned against overstating Mexico’s role in the recent drop in traffic.
Panama reported that fewer than 25,000 migrants walked through the Darién jungle in December, about half of October’s level and a sign that fewer people are leaving South America for the US.
Migration usually falls in December amid the holidays and cold weather.
“The US can rely on Mexico for short-term enforcement effects on migration at the border, but the long-term effects are not always clear,” Selee said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
