The train rumbles through the migrant camp in Mexico City, honking its horn and forcing people to run towards the wall. It always happens at 10:00 in the morning, punctual as a clock, according to the residents, almost all of whom have lived there for months, while they wait for an opportunity to request asylum in the United States.
Now, they and hundreds of thousands of people across Mexico have been left in limbo after Donald Trump shut down the CBP One app they had been using to schedule asylum appointments.
As Trump was being sworn in on Monday, the app suddenly stopped working. Videos began to circulate of people at the border crying when they saw that their appointments – in some cases they were going to be in just a few hours – had been cancelled.
Since then, Trump has signed a barrage of anti-immigration decreesdeclaring an emergency on the southern border, ordering the deployment of troops in the area and reinstating the ‘Stay in Mexico’ immigration program, which forces non-Mexican migrants to wait south of the border while their asylum applications are processed.
A mandatory app in practice
The CBP One app was launched two years ago as a way to limit and manage arrivals of asylum seekers at the border, allowing only 1,450 appointments per day, far less than demand. It allowed migrants to present themselves at a port of entry to request protection and access to the country.
Application became practically an obligation for asylum seekers: many of those who showed up without an appointment were rejected. This meant that applicants had to choose between waiting for months, often in dangerous areas of Mexico, or paying smugglers to cross the border. Many opted for the first option, and since the launch of CBP One, around one million appointments have been made.
Over time, CBP One became available not only at the border, but also in central and southern Mexico. This, added to the efforts of Mexican authorities to forcibly contain migrants in the south of the country, resulted in a lower concentration of people in the border cities of northern Mexico.
Shelters in cities like Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana have been half empty for almost a year. But the abrupt closure of CBP One, which 270,000 asylum seekers had been using across Mexico, could shatter the fragile calm at the border.
Some 30,000 appointments that had already been scheduled have also been cancelled.
“Completely unacceptable”
“CBP One was riddled with errors and was ultimately a tool that forced people to wait in Mexico to access the US asylum system,” says Andrew Bahena of Chirla, an advocacy organization. migrants. “But the way it ended was completely unacceptable.”
“There are families in this camp who spent thousands of dollars – almost all their resources – on plane tickets alone and have seen their appointments cancelled,” he adds.
María Ángela and Carolina, two Venezuelan mothers whose young children play around their legs, say they will wait two months before making any decision. “Maybe Trump will calm down a little,” María Ángela says with a mocking smile. “It has just arrived and everything is in revolution.”
David and Nixon, two young Venezuelans sitting on a tattered couch, share this hope. They say that some are talking about returning home if they are offered free repatriation flights, but that they will not do so. “I’m not coming back until Maduro is gone,” says Nixon, whose good spirits fade for a moment at the mention of the Venezuelan president.
Araceli, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, says she now wants to apply for asylum in Mexico. He managed to reach the US border with his adult daughters by floating on the Rio Grande on an inflatable mattress. But their request for asylum was ignored, and they were deported to Villahermosa, in the far south of Mexico.
The experience seems to have left her exhausted, and she had been in Mexico City for several months waiting for an appointment with CBP One. However, now Araceli – like many others who had been waiting for a CBP One appointment – may have difficulty requesting asylum in Mexico, given that the process must begin within 30 days of entering the country.
“People are desperate”
The closure of CBP One has been felt throughout Mexico and has plunged people into uncertainty. It is possible that this situation will cause many of those who were waiting in southern Mexico to try to head to the north of the country, despite the Government’s attempts to keep them where they are.
“I saw the viral posts with migrants crying at the border. Exactly the same thing happened here: people are desperate,” says Josué Leal, from the Oasis De Paz del Espíritu Santo Amparito shelter in Villahermosa, a city in the state of Tabasco, on the Gulf of Mexico. “The vast majority here now plan to hit the road, heading north.”
At the opposite end of the country, people whose desired destination is within sight were left heartbroken as hope of receiving asylum was taken from them. “I feel desperate and I’m afraid of what might happen,” says a displaced Mexican woman at the Centro de Esperanza migrant shelter in Sonoyta, a small, dusty town in the border state of Sonora. “Imagine if we have to go back home to face the same threats and start from scratch again… I get sick just thinking about it.”
“I don’t wish what we’ve been through on anyone. It was very hard to get here and now we don’t know what is going to happen,” says Juan, a Venezuelan who asks not to reveal his last name. “The truth is that we did not expect the applications to close so immediately.”
No one knows what, if anything, will replace CBP One. But Trump’s restrictive immigration policies are likely to fuel an increase in organized crime in Mexico.
“Every time it becomes more difficult to access asylum or cross the border, coyotes make money. And that means the cartels make money,” says Ari Sawyer, a migration researcher. “The Trump administration says it wants to fight cartels, but on the contrary, it is enriching them.”
With the collaboration of Nina Lakhani.
Translation by Julián Cnochaert.
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