On a cold riverbank at U.S.-Mexico border, migrants endure limbo as U.S. policy shifts

CIUDAD JUÁREZ — Along the soggy banks of the Rio Grande, more than 1,000 migrant people endured a bone-chilling cold and political limbo this week as they tried to decipher a U.S. federal judge’s decision to end far-reaching asylum restrictions.

They huddled in blue and green tents, trying to keep warm. In an area dubbed Little Venezuela, because so many of the migrants hailed from that country, parents warned their children to avoid the gray, murky water.

Their mood shifted between optimism and despair. Should they try their luck and cross the river to make a plea for asylum or any kind of entry?

Answers to that question became even more fraught when U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the migrants’ cause Tuesday.

He struck down Title 42, a Trump-era health order that has allowed border agents to expel migrants more than 2 million times, without giving them a chance to apply for asylum under the justification that it was for pandemic safety. A day later, the judge accepted the Biden administration’s motion to delay lifting the policy until Dec. 21.

The impact of Sullivan’s decision: More migrants will likely cross into the U.S. and be able to apply for asylum in a strained system, lawyers said.

But the policy’s application has already been uneven, depending on one’s country of origin, experts said. Cubans were likely to get passage across. Guatemalans faced quick expulsion back to Mexico. Venezuelans, who once had been let in by the tens of thousands, later found themselves effectively shut out when the U.S. policy changed in mid-October.

Many migrants refused to move into government shelters, distrusting Mexican authorities. They gathered on the riverbank, where they believed they could take advantage of any shift in U.S. policy.

‘Too much to lose’

At the river camp Wednesday, Merlyn Mateos and her husband, Alexander Sánchez, looked for greasy pizza cartons to protect themselves against wind and freezing temperatures.

“We are preparing to wait … because we want to do things the legal way,” said Mateos, 25, a former police officer in Caracas, Venezuela, who traveled for more than four weeks to get to Juárez.

U.S. court decisions and policy changes made them feel like they were playing a game of Russian roulette, Mateos said. “We prefer to wait. We have too much to lose.”

As they learned about the federal judge’s decision, the Mateos family and other migrants grappled with a host of questions: Should they stay at the camp, seek shelter in Juárez or risk the crossing?

How would they survive a week of this cold?

Once migrants were processed by U.S. immigration officials, could private shelters — already strapped for resources — handle more people?

Would they be sent to federal detention facilities? Could El Paso move people onto buses and into a makeshift shelter as they awaited court dates? With a backlog of 2 million cases, could the nation’s immigration courts handle even more?

Nearby, Edicson Torrealba, 27, had enough. “I’m leaving,” he said. “If my claim is not good enough, I’m ready to go home, wherever that is.”

As he left to cross the river, he snapped his fingers and said, “Amigos, the coin is in the air. Let’s hope it’s heads.” On the other side, two U.S. immigration officials awaited his arrival. His fate was unclear.

Karina Unda, from Quito, Ecuador, paused for a moment and followed him. “I have no plan, other than to somehow reach the U.S.,” she said.

By Friday morning, the Mateos family was gone, as were about half the families in the camp. Sanitation workers cleaned up the debris, including tents, clothing and water bottles.

Freezing temperatures had apparently spurred many of the families to leave. U.S. immigration authorities estimated some 900 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, had crossed the river and turned themselves in to U.S. authorities.

A swell of legal cases

Adam Isacson, a migration and security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, visited El Paso this week and said he was worried that the U.S. government wasn’t prepared to handle a fresh swell of legal cases, including many complicated asylum pleas.

Displacement of people around the world is at record highs, the United Nations has noted. That’s clear at the U.S.-Mexico border, where the number of migrant arrivals increased last fiscal year to about 2.2 million, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

In October, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data showed Title 42 was applied only about a third of the time across the length of the border and in El Paso, the busiest region of nine sectors for the U.S. Border Patrol. In fiscal year 2022, it was used about half the time.

The policy was still used more than 1 million times in the last fiscal year, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, the managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Now those people will be processed under immigration law, rather than the health policy. That places the migrants in a strained system with huge backlogs, said Brown, who worked on immigration issues in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

“These are people who believe very strongly that, if they stay [in their birth countries], their family will not survive,” she said.

Getting “released” into the U.S., rather than returned to Mexico under Title 42, means these migrants may still get deported. But clogs in federal immigration courts mean they may “get deported five years from now,” Brown said. “Five years of relative safety … is better than where they were.”

El Paso, meanwhile, is keeping a watchful eye. City spokeswoman Laura Cruz-Acosta said the city was monitoring the fast-moving situation. She noted that the federal border agencies wouldn’t change operations yet. She added that the city had asked FEMA for advance funding to “possibly open up a welcoming center … We are awaiting a notification from them.”

In late August and through September, so many migrants had come into the city that migrants camped on public sidewalks. Privately-run shelters were saturated.

A mother’s dream

On Wednesday night, before many families left the river camp, Olga Barroso, 32, walked with her two young sons, Joan, 6, and Juan, 4, along the banks of the Rio Grande.

She planned to cook chicken with money she made selling candy on the streets. Her husband works day jobs in construction in Juárez.

Her sons were the reason she was determined to reach the U.S. Originally, they hoped to get to Miami, or to Aspen, Colo., where they have friends. “I don’t know how much more we can do this,” she said, pointing to her son, who recently fell on his chin and needed stitches.

That night, she fell into a slumber and woke up startled. “I dreamed that we were drowning,” she said. She got up and stared at the waters of the Rio Grande.

“All I could think about is how our lives are in the hands … of a judge,” she said. “If the American dream doesn’t work out for us, maybe we’ll stay in Juárez, or Mexico City, because there is no turning back to Venezuela. We sold everything in Caracas. We lost everything.”

Alfredo Corchado reported from Ciudad Juárez and Dianne Solis reported from Dallas.