The destination at hand and yet inaccessible: this is the situation in which there are currently many migrants who are on the Mexican side of the border with the United States.
One of them, who does not wish to be cited by fear for his security, told the DW that criminals had wanted to remove it with his daughter. This is why she left her home in southern Mexico.
The DW met her in Ciudad Juárez, on the American state border in Texas.
“We have no way to get out of it, because we cannot just say that we start from scratch. Here, we are always in Mexico and the gangs are powerful, they are everywhere”, she believes.
On the other side of the Rio Grande, and therefore in the United States, is El Paso, a city of 680,000 inhabitants, of which around 80% come from a country in Latin America, according to official statistics.
It is the hometown of Aimée Santillán, who takes care of American migration policy within the Catholic organization Hope.
“There have already been very strong restrictions in the past and the figures for migration have not changed“, explain Santillán.
“If people do not feel safe in their country, they will come anyway. This does not change much that policies are restrictive or that they are fairer and equitable”, Adds Aimée Santillán.
Restrictive policies under biden
Restrictive policies of which Donald Trump inherited his predecessor, Joe Biden, and who predict in particular that people have no chance of obtaining asylum after illegally crossing the border.
-Despite everything, the Biden administration had created a legal possibility, the CBP One application, which allowed migrants to request asylum from Mexico. This application was suspended by Donald Trump on January 20, the same day of his inauguration.
Aimée Santillán of the Hope organization was not entirely satisfied with the application, but at least she said, made it possible to ensure a process ordered on the border.
“See how it was disabled and how people waiting for months in Mexico suddenly found themselves without an appointment, it was really shocking”explain Santillán.
With the state of emergency, “All illegal entries will be immediately stopped and we will start to send millions and millions of criminal foreigners where they come from”Hissed Donald Trump during his inauguration speech.
Hundreds of illegal migrants have already been sent home on military aircraft.
According to some estimates, six million Mexicans live undocumented in the United States, in addition to the legally installed twelve million.
