The humanitarian crisis that is experienced every day on the border between Mexico and the United States has found a new focus. Thousands of migrants – between 3,000 and 5,000 according to unofficial estimates – are sleeping outdoors this Thursday in the Texas city of Eagle Pass, which connects through an international bridge with Piedras Negras, Coahuila, on the Mexican side. The crossing is one of the hot spots on the line and, in recent days, has seen an increase in the flow of people trying to reach the United States. American authorities are concentrating migrants on a vacant lot on the outskirts of the municipality. , who spend the night with the only shelter of a thermal blanket waiting to be processed by border agents.
The image, another example of the lack of protection and vulnerability of the migrant population traveling between Mexico and the United States, arrives on the same day that the presidents of both countries, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joe Biden, held a phone call in the who have agreed to tighten border control. The announcement comes after the Mexican president acknowledged an unusual increase in irregular crossings, which have grown by 31%, according to the US Border Patrol (CBP). A delegation led by Antony Blinken, Secretary of State in the United States, will visit Mexico in the coming days to draw up a new containment strategy.
The migration crisis has two faces. On the one hand, the political decisions taken between both Executives, always aimed at clenching their fist to repel migration. The strategy is not new, it responds to the general trend of recent years, denounced endlessly for violating the human rights of migrants by countless NGOs and humanitarian organizations. On the other side, there are the faces that suffer from the measures: more than 250,000 people this December alone —according to CBP—, the majority originating from Central America, South America and Mexico itself, fleeing poverty, inequality and structural violence, to find themselves on the US border with a retaining wall, in addition to a journey through Mexican territory plagued by assaults, rapes, kidnappings or abuse of police power.
The mayor of Eagle Pass, Rolando Salinas, has described the situation as unsustainable and accuses the total lack of control at the border crossing. Salinas has repeatedly denounced the Biden Administration for “abandoning” the community to its fate. This September, he declared a state of emergency after the entry of 5,000 migrants. At the end of November, he blocked the passage of vehicles from Piedras Negras, a measure that sought to reassign traffic agents to immigration control tasks to decongest the irregular flow. This Thursday, traffic continued to be closed on International Bridge 1 and reduced to one lane on International Bridge 2, with lines of cars eight kilometers long, according to Univision. The municipality also suspended train movement.
Images of overcrowding like those seen this Thursday in Texas are repeated every few weeks in the hot spots on the border, overwhelmed by a constant flow that fails to stop any of the official policies. Migrant detention centers in the United States are overwhelmed well beyond their capacities. Only the El Río sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is currently holding 5,200 people, 256% above its capacities, according to the television channel. NewsNation. Between Texas and Arizona there are at least 18,500 migrants arrested.
On Thursday afternoon, after the call with López Obrador, Biden made an appeal on the social network X (formerly Twitter). “More measures are urgently needed to reopen key ports of entry on our shared border,” declared the president, pressured by the impact of border closures on some sectors of the US economy – an erosion that Mexican businessmen also accuse. Biden, who is seeking re-election in 2024, came to office three years ago with the intention of “humanizing” border management. The speech contrasted with that of the previous president, Donald Trump, who systematically criminalized immigration processes. Biden encountered, however, a crisis of unexpected magnitude, and has ended up toughening Trump's measures in the face of strong attacks from the opposition and states like Texas, which tightens anti-immigration laws every so often.
Mexico, for its part, finds itself in a delicate balance, forced to maneuver between US demands for tighter control and constant complaints from human rights associations over its treatment of migrants. The Government promised a humanizing reform of the immigration strategy, after the fire of a prison for foreigners of the National Migration Institute (INM) in which 40 people died.
In addition to Blinken, several US officials, such as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and US National Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, will travel to Mexico in the coming days to meet with López Obrador and address the issue. Meanwhile, oblivious to the political conversations, the migratory flow continues to grow at the border, waiting for a hypothetical visa or a mistake by the patrols.
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