Ciudad Hidalgo—As soon as she set foot in southern Mexico this week, Venezuelan Yuri Carolina Meléndez downloaded the U.S. government’s CBPOne application onto her cell phone to request asylum in the United States.
“I have to wait to see if it really works,” said the woman as she rested under a tree with her 16- and 18-year-old daughters on the road between the Suchiate River — on the border with Guatemala — and Tapachula, considered the capital of the country’s southern border. The application is not new, but as of Friday it can be used not only from northern and central Mexico but also from the states bordering Guatemala — Chiapas and Tabasco — something that Mexico has long requested from the United States and that could stop the flow to the north and reduce risks to migrants who cross the country irregularly and are often victims of organized crime or any type of abuse. Some migrants, like the Honduran Germin Alemán, 31, who left his wife and three children in his country, will do this as soon as he arrives in Tapachula. “We are going to process it here, we are going to wait for the appointment,” he said as he walked toward that city after crossing the border river. Others will not. Meléndez, the Venezuelan, wants to continue moving forward to reach an area of Mexico where she can find work because in the south, jobs are scarce. CBPOne has been one of the most impactful measures implemented by the Joe Biden administration to promote legal immigration to the United States and since it began operating in January 2023, more than 765,000 people have scheduled appointments to request asylum online. In addition, since June, when Washington temporarily suspended asylum processing for those who crossed the border irregularly, the application became one of the few ways to request asylum. It offers almost 1,500 appointments daily. After an unprecedented arrival of migrants at the United States border at the end of 2023 — in that entire fiscal year, the Border Patrol intercepted more than 2.4 million people — Mexico increased controls to contain this flow and increased the transfer of undocumented immigrants from the north to the south of the country. Arrivals have declined, but for Mexican authorities the geographic expansion of CBPOne is a great achievement because it allows for further decongestion on the northern border and in Mexico City, where camps for irregular migrants waiting for an appointment are proliferating. “This is going to help us a lot,” said Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena at the beginning of August when she announced the measure. Migration is one of the key issues in bilateral relations. However, for more than fifty organizations, both American and Latin American — including some as well-known as Amnesty International, WOLA, HIAS or IMUMI — there is little to celebrate.
Open letter
In an open letter to the Mexican government released Thursday, they claim that CBPOne “is a violation of international law” because it limits the access of people in need of protection to its territory. Specifically, they claim that many of its users are stranded for up to seven months in Mexico, in overcrowded shelters or camps without decent living conditions, or have reported kidnappings, sexual abuse, torture, and extortion at the hands of organized crime and authorities. In theory, the National Institute of Migration (INM) allows free transit through the country to migrants who already have a CBPOne appointment, but, according to the signatories of the letter, there have been cases in which people with appointments have been taken to immigration detention centers and “returned to the south of the country in order to prevent them from showing up at U.S. ports of entry.” The INM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bloody battle
Moreover, given that the situation on the border between Mexico and Guatemala – once a relatively peaceful region – has radically changed and has become the scene of a bloody battle between cartels for control of migrant, drug and arms trafficking routes, NGOs are calling for a “comprehensive intervention” by the Mexican government to guarantee the safety of all migrants. Meanwhile, in the central square of Ciudad Hidalgo, the town along the river bordering Guatemala, the big question was whether to stay and wait for the appointment or move forward? A group of migrants weighed their options and the economic issue was the first to take into account because everyone has heard that in central and northern Mexico there are more possibilities for employment, even if it is informal, while they wait for a response from the North American authorities. “If there are job opportunities, we stay; if not, we continue moving forward while they give us the appointment,” said Yuleidi Banqué, a 28-year-old Venezuelan woman who recently arrived in Mexico with her partner and her 7-year-old daughter. “My daughter is ill…they are fed through a gastric button, we need help.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is cautious about the new scenario. Giovanni Lepri, head of UNHCR in Mexico, indicated in a message to AP that the expansion of access to CBPOne may mean less risk for migrants on their way north but warned that to address migration in the region it is necessary to combine different measures “such as stabilization in the countries of origin, protection in transit countries and options for regularization and asylum in destination countries.” For Salvadoran Noemí Ramírez, 47, hearing on the news that she could begin her process in the United States from Chiapas, decided to immediately undertake the trip with her 19-year-old daughter to Tapachula. “We are going to wait until we get the appointment, I am not going to move anymore,” she said as she walked toward that city, worried about the violence on the road. “I’m not going to take any risks with my daughter, we are alone,” she added.
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