The most difficult thing is not to cut yourself when crossing the fence. You should put a thick blanket or a bundle of clothing over the blades before jumping. Or, if you’re lucky, someone brings some pliers to make a hole and then you can crawl in. Once inside, hands up, walk slowly along the wall and surrender to the border patrol at gate 36. It is the instruction manual of Alejandro Cárdenas, a recent graduate in Architecture from the University of Caracas. He has been explaining everything step by step on WhatsApp to his cousin, who crossed like this last week. Now the rest of the Cárdenas family is missing: three other cousins, two sisters, the mother and a three-year-old granddaughter. They all wait on the Mexican edge of the Rio Grande, just a stream four meters wide in this stretch, convinced that tonight they too are going to make it: “People pass by every day. Today I am going inside with the blessing of God.”
Gate 36 on the border of Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) with El Paso (Texas) has become a kind of lucky charm for hundreds of migrants, especially Venezuelans, who in recent weeks have been concentrating on this piece of desert land loaded with faith. There are remains of clothing on the ground, even a tent. They came to set up small camps at the very first American crossing, past the river and already touching the wire fences. In recent days, videos of large groups advancing in the race amid the resignation of Mexican immigration agents have spread on the networks.
So much commotion has caused a reinforcement of security in the area. The Texas National Guard has been dismantling the camps with blows and tonight there are five vans guarding them and a handful of armed guards. From time to time, a blue light from the police shines in the face of someone in the group, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to intimidate them. “I’ve been traveling almost on foot for two months, I’ve seen people die, I’ve been robbed, I’ve been hungry, so now I’m not going to leave here,” says Gregorio Vázquez, owner of a small mechanical workshop in a Venezuelan town. While he tells how his wife and daughter spent these days crawling through one of the holes in the wire fence, a voice warns that another group has managed to get to the other side and is putting them through the famous gate 36. They scream, dance and press the cuffs on this side. It is an injection of adrenaline for the people who continue to arrive without caring at all about the wind that blows up bigger and bigger puffs of sand every time. “Daddy, we’re going to be next,” says a woman with her face covered with a scarf to protect herself from the dust.
Border patrol records estimate that in September alone, 50,000 Venezuelans entered the United States without papers. They are one of the nationalities that contributes the most to the growth of a flow of migrants that has been increasing progressively since May, when the end was decreed. of Title 42, an exception for health reasons, extended since the pandemic, which allowed immediate deportation without any procedure. Analysts explain the reasons for this peak in Venezuelans as a kind of effect caused by a mixture of good news and half-baked rumors.
On the one hand, it is true that the US Government has granted work permits for Venezuelan quotas. It is also true that since there is no bilateral deportation treaty after the diplomatic rupture since the time of Hugo Chávez, when they are detained at the border they usually go into a legal limbo between when they are released and until they have their trials. This hiatus can last up to two years. But that doesn’t mean everyone is welcome. The Department of Homeland Security has already announced this week that it has reached an agreement with Caracas. Deportations will begin “rapidly in the coming days.”
Rocky Balboa in El Paso
Karismar Rodríguez is 38 years old and has just been released from one of the tent-like migrant detention centers in El Paso. She crossed the river five days ago, put a blanket over the blades and surrendered to the police. This Thursday afternoon, a few hours before her compatriots prepare to make the jump at night, she tells, sitting on a street in the Texas city, how bad it was until they released her. “They woke us up at four in the morning to take a shower and they barely gave me any medicine.” Karismar’s eyes are very red and he keeps blinking while she talks. The last stage to reach the border was three days on the roof of a train, a mastodon of goods, the nefarious Beast, as it is known among migrants. “Because of so much wind and so much cold I got ear infections. And now I think I have an eye infection.”
Her husband, who accompanied her during the trip of two months and almost 10 countries, listens to her standing and nods his head. He remembers seeing corpses floating in the Darién, the jungle that separates Colombia from Panama. But he is very clear that the worst part was in Mexico. “The police took us off the train, stole our money and left us stranded in the desert. And thank goodness we got rid of the bad guys (coyotes, human traffickers).” She summarizes her migrant odyssey like this: “We are like Rocky Balboa, the boxer in the movie, carrying around all day long.”
They both have a yellow bracelet on their wrist. It means that they are going to be sent from Texas to some of the “sanctuary” cities, so called because of their more protectionist policy towards migrants. They go to New York. There they have their first hearing pending for the deportation trial, for June 2024. They will not be able to work legally and will have to make a living. “I don’t know what will happen but I’m sure I’m better off there than in my country.”
The family next door is sent to Chicago. They are another group of Venezuelans. The mother says that she also crossed several without losing sight of one of her children, almost a baby, while he was playing on the sidewalk. The street is crowded. The city has even placed public toilets on the sidewalks. Everyone waits at the door of a church painted blue and a giant Virgin of Guadalupe to be given food and some clothes. El Paso, a Democratic oasis within very Republican Texas, is saturated. There is no more room in the shelters. Mayor Oscar Leeser declared in late September that the city had reached a “breaking point” and could no longer help all migrants.
The mayor has even expressed gratitude for the policy of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a tough Republican hawk, of distributing them throughout the sanctuary cities. It is a pressure strategy to erode the most permissive measures of President Biden’s Government with regard to migration. Abbot is addicted to provocation. He has hung a wall of buoys in the largest areas of the river and usually blocks commercial entrances by land, with the excuse of exhaustive controls, creating million-dollar economic losses for Mexico.
Faced with pressure, Biden has progressively tightened his fist at the border. In May, after the end of Title 42, he sent more than 24,000 agents in total along the 3,200 kilometer strip. Another twist at the end of September with 800 new agents and the announcement of an acceleration in deportations. And this same week, the president turned into a dead letter the promise he made as soon as he arrived at the White House: “no more American taxes will be used to build a wall.” Through a decree he has annulled 26 federal laws, which will allow the construction of 32 kilometers of fence in south Texas.
The massive arrival of migrants in recent months threatens to break all recent records. The forecast is more than 200,000 arrests recorded for this year. From now on, the Government will combine a heavy hand with measures to regulate the flow such as quota policies, agreements with countries of origin or the digital system to request asylum through the CBP one application. On the streets of El Paso, one of the veteran Venezuelans believes that his compatriots will continue to come. He has a tattoo above his right eyebrow that says “The Neck.” It is his nickname since he drove buses in a neighborhood of Caracas. “There the money doesn’t give you anything.” He has been in El Paso for almost a year. He is going for his second deportation hearing but there is still no definitive date. El Cuello says goodbye riding a red bicycle because he gets up early tomorrow to work in construction “for a few good dollars.”
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