Migrants who crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico are lined up for processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Dig
At the Border in 2024
A decade of anti-immigrant rhetoric and unstable, post-pandemic conditions in the Global South have coalesced into a multibillion-dollar, election-year battle to keep poor people in Latin America from accessing the United States. This Dig series seeks to explore: What is it like to traverse this landscape as a migrant, and what would it look like if we opened it all up? A Dig curated by Lillian Perlmutter
Stuck in a State of Limbo
The Biden administration's tangled asylum process adds another difficult crossing for migrants.
Two migrants sleep in their bunk bed at the San Juan Bosco migrant shelter in Nogales, Mexico, on June 25, 2024. Many migrants who fail interviews are deported to Nogales, a sprawling city in the Mexican state of Sonora, and end up at the shelter, where a giant fan in a former chapel offers relief from blistering summer heat. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
On June 2, Carlos Javier made a critical error. It was the eve of what should have been the last day in a treacherous three-week journey from Venezuela to the United States, and he lost his nerve. Within view of the U.S.-Mexico border in Juárez, the stocky, 30-something migrant decided not to rush across the Rio Grande and its obstacle course of razor wire laid down by the Texas National Guard. Instead, he would rest up in a migrant shelter for a few days, regain his strength and then make the final push across the river and on to a designated gate where asylum seekers present themselves to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Two days later, on June 4, Javier was still in Juarez when the Biden administration issued an executive order drastically restricting the asylum process at ports-of-entry such as the one at El Paso-Juarez. As a result, Javier was stuck in a shelter with 80 other migrants who suddenly found themselves in a state of limbo. “When I learned I would have to stay here, it was like someone had thrown a jug of cold water on me,” Javier told me at the La Esperanza shelter in Juarez. “I cannot say how much I regret that decision. But I’m gathering strength. I want to continue.” As recently as a year ago, crossing the geographical border that is the Rio Grande did not cause undue anxiety in asylum-seekers like Javier. After crossing the river, they simply walked to a gate in the adjacent border wall, sat down and waited for Border Patrol to pick them up. But in the summer of 2024, migrants have good reason to pause in Juarez before making the final push toward what they hope will be a new life in the United States. The border crossing areas are controlled by the Juárez mafia and other criminal groups, leaving migrants at high risk of kidnapping and extortion. Once this peril is navigated, crossing the river means contending with submerged razor wire as well as white drones that spray teargas on any detected movement. Once on the U.S. side, migrants — who are often carrying small children — must tunnel through yet more razor wire coiled into tall hedges. During the time it takes to find an appropriate spot to fashion a tunnel, Texas National Guard agents often pull up and begin shooting them with rubber bullets from inside their trucks. Dig deeper Mar 25, 2024In Texas, Migrants Meet a Land of Walls and Wire
The state has invested billions into deadly barriers at the border, but asylum seekers still come — in higher numbers than ever.
A migrants carries bags towards the U.S. border fence from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO — When they find a shallow place to cross the Rio Grande, the two dozen migrants hoist their small children onto their shoulders and wade into the muck. Most wear shoes, because the riverbed is covered in sharp trash. But one agile man goes barefoot and darts back and forth across the river to retrieve children whose mothers prove too unbalanced to trudge through the mud with a top-heavy load. A woman in a pink puffer jacket, now half wet, stumbles and nearly falls in. The center of the river marks the border between Mexico and the United States.
The group hails from Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia; all are escaping environments of growing violence, political instability or economic disaster. Several carry letters designating them refugees, signed by officials in countries they passed through during their northward march. Most do not have family already living in the United States and are unsure where they will live or how they will find work in a country where they do not speak the language. Up until this moment, their sole focus has been making it here, to the river, the momentous boundary between known turmoil and imagined calm.
Daniel Lopez, a 12-year-old boy, is the eldest child in the group and the only one able to cross the river on his own. “The entire trip from Venezuela has been easy for me, not for the rest of my family,” he says. His parents and four-year-old sister have experienced the same journey, but struggle with emotional fatigue from the sights of dead bodies in the Darien jungle, the many robberies and the harrowing stories of migrants they met along the way. The family now faces their moment of crescendo, when they will turn themselves in to Border Patrol to begin their asylum screening.
Dig deeper Dig Discussion