On the US-Mexico border, asylum seekers remain hopeful amid difficulties US-Mexico border news

Maria escaped from a violent drug group in the Mexican state of Michoacan, changing only three clothes.

The 38-year-old traveled 2,500 km (1,500 miles) to the edge of the country, where her husband, two young children and other families have been waiting for asylum in the United States.

Now that The U.S.-Mexico border has reopened, he says he hopes to get ahead.

“We have come a long way from organized crime because we are not criminals,” Maria said, asking her not to give up her real name, this week to the AFP news agency from an improvised camp in the Mexican city of Tijuana.

Maria, who says her family was threatened last year after joining her eldest son in a criminal group, is part of a Central and South American record that traveled to the US last year.

Hundreds of local camps along the U.S.-Mexican border were detained by U.S. authorities at the event. A record 1.7 million migrants trying to get into the country.

Migrants have said so forced to flee their homelands chronic unemployment, gang violence, the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic, and the catastrophe caused by recent storms, among others.

The arrivals they have put pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, who promised that Donald Trump would take a more humane approach than his predecessor to overturning immigration and some of Trump’s toughest policies.

But Biden, who took office in January, has held on Trump-era politics this allows the U.S. to deport most asylum seekers who reach the southern border to Mexico or their countries of origin.

Title 42 policy, contains he received widespread criticism On behalf of immigrant advocates who say it is illegal, he cites concerns about the potential expansion of COVID-19. denied to most asylum seekers the possibility of seeking protection in the US.

It remains in place when the U.S. reopened the Mexican border on Monday for non-essential travel after a 20-month shutdown following the pandemic.

On Monday, the U.S. reopened the Mexican border to vaccinated travelers [Toya Sarno Jordan/Reuters]

In another makeshift camp on the Mexican border Chaparral, dozens of children have slept on the ground inside vulnerable tents while waiting for the opportunity to seek asylum in the US.

Nearly 770 people currently live in the migrant camp, according to a recent census of Mexico’s border city. Tijuana, of which 40% are minors. Some children in El Chaparral, fenced and controlled by police, were born in the United States.

Although this automatically gives children American citizenship, many said they left the country when they deported undocumented parents. Families have traveled throughout Mexico to try to return to the U.S.

“I want everything to be fine so that my mother can have a home. I want to go to the United States, but with my mother, ”a girl named Evelyn told Reuters, who showed a birth certificate stating that the Mexican mother was born in Los Angeles.

“My sisters and I have it [US] papers, but when my father had to come here, my mother brought us all in, ”10-year-old Evelyn said. “She cries a lot because they don’t have the money to feed us.”

Migrant rights groups say migrants and asylum seekers have been subjected to numerous threats in Mexican border towns waiting to enter the U.S., they said. April report Hundreds of acts of violence have been reported since Biden took office.

“Asylum seekers returning to Mexico are being kidnapped, raped and assaulted,” said then-Kennji Kizuka, associate director of research and analysis for refugee protection at Human Rights First. Black migrants and asylum seekers, as well as members of the LGBTQ community, were particularly at risk of violence, the groups said.

Meanwhile, on his return to El Chaparral, Pedro, a 15-year-old migrant, has a birth certificate stating he was born in Los Angeles, and said his four brothers were also there. His mother brought them to his hometown in Mexico three months ago when his father was deported.

Now he washes cars in Tijuana using a small rag, earning everything he is willing to give people. “I’ve never worked, but I’m doing it to help my mother,” she said.