Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — Tons of of individuals tried to storm the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, after a rumor that migrants could be allowed to cross into the USA. Round midday, a big crowd of primarily Venezuelans started to collect close to the doorway of a bridge connecting Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, Texas within the southern United States.
Annoyed by delays and difficulties in making use of for asylum in the USA after journeys hundreds of miles lengthy by way of Central America and Mexico, some informed AFP they thought they might be allowed entry due to a supposed “day of the migrant” celebration.
Metropolis of El Paso/Handout
Photographs on social media confirmed a bunch that included many ladies and kids working in the direction of the border, shouting “to the USA.”
They shortly encountered barbed wire, orange barricades and police with shields.
US border guards “in fact” moved to shut the bridge, stated Enrique Valenzuela, a civil society employee who helps migrants in Juarez.
Jackson Solis, a 23-year-old Venezuelan, was amongst those that got here to the bridge on Sunday to see if the rumor was true.
“All of us ran and so they put a fence with barbed wire round us. They threw tear fuel at us,” he stated.
Solis informed AFP he had been ready six months to attempt to schedule an appointment to use for asylum in the USA, the place he needs to work. Appointments should now be booked by way of a Customs and Border Safety cell app that was launched this 12 months as asylum seekers have been required to use upfront reasonably than upon arrival.
The Biden administration has been hoping to stem the report tide of migrants and asylum seekers enterprise typically harmful journeys organized by human smugglers to get to the USA.
In January, the White Home proposed expanding a controversial rule to permit border guards to show away extra would-be migrants in the event that they arrive by land.
“Don’t simply present up on the border,” President Joe Biden stated in a speech on the time.
Mr. Biden took workplace vowing to offer refuge to asylum seekers and finish harsh detention insurance policies for unlawful border crossers, however since he commissioned new asylum eligibility guidelines in a February 2021 government order, three folks with direct data of the debates informed CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez there have been disagreements inside the administration over how beneficiant the laws ought to be.
Some high administration officers have voiced concern about issuing guidelines that would make further migrants eligible for asylum and make it tougher to deport them whereas the administration is targeted on decreasing illegal border crossings, the sources informed CBS Information.
About 200,000 folks attempt to cross the border from Mexico to the USA every month, however the variety of migrants apprehended by U.S. border patrol brokers after illegally crossing into the U.S. dropped by roughly 40% in January — when the Biden administration introduced its revamped strategy to discourage illegal crossings, in accordance with preliminary authorities information obtained by CBS Information final month.
Border Patrol brokers recorded roughly 130,000 apprehensions of migrants who entered the U.S. between official ports of entry alongside the border with Mexico in January, in comparison with the near-record 221,000 apprehensions in December, the interior preliminary figures present. The variety of Border Patrol apprehensions in November and October totaled 207,396 and 204,874, respectively.
Most are from Central and South America, and so they usually cite poverty and violence of their residence nations in requesting asylum.
