Joserez – Maria de los angeles Cruz woke up to another day of terrifying uncertainty after sleeping outside the Migrant Relief Agency office by the light of the US border fence, after the US Border Patrol expelled her along with nearly 500 other Venezuelan immigrants.
Dozens of Venezuelans on Saturday morning set out to ask questions without answers. Where do they sleep and eat? What will they do next? She said that upon the expulsion, Mexican authorities asked the 25-year-old and others to sign a document advising them to leave the country within 15 days “by their own means.” but how? And where can you go?
What she experienced on the six-week overland journey from South America could fill the darkest chapters of García Márquez’s novel. After returning to Mexico, she passed out at the foot of the international bridge, unable to breathe, she said, overwhelmed by the failure of her endeavours.
“I kept going, and I had to do many things I don’t want to talk about now in order to get through things, always with so much trepidation, to eat or to pay someone to take care of me,” she said. “I didn’t know what I could do.”
“But I feel so proud of myself that I got here—a step away,” she continued, sobbing.
De los Ángeles Croce and others lined up for a cup of hot coffee. The Baptist missionaries, originally from Venezuela, brought a tall silver bowl to the corner outside the Chihuahua state center to take care of immigrants. It’s a secluded space where railroads bend west to cross the American border, and the remnants of immigration litter the concrete banks of the Rio Grande Canal. The US barbed wire border fence obscures the view of El Paso.
Jairo Mendoza held a black Bible in his hands as he prayed for “El pueblo venezolano‘In an accent that seemed to them home. He preached for a few minutes, then promised to return in the evening, perhaps in Venezuelan fashion. Arebascorn massa The pocket is often filled with chicken or black beans and fresh white cheese.
“We were following their journey,” he said. “And when the law changed, we knew that many of them would end up here.”
“It’s a real social and economic crisis in Venezuela,” said Mendoza, who left the country in 2013, the year President Hugo Chavez died. “People earn less than $40 a month there, but you need $300 or $400 to eat. It’s very difficult what our people live with.”
On Thursday, the Biden administration and Mexico announced a joint agreement to slow migration flows through the region. The number of Venezuelans seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border began to rise in September, threatening a humanitarian crisis in US border cities, including in El Paso.
Mexico has agreed to take back Venezuelans returning under Title 42, a US public health body used throughout the pandemic to quickly return migrants to their countries of origin, or in some cases, to Mexico. The United States has agreed to provide an additional 65,000 temporary work visas to Mexican, Central American and Haitian workers, and has also agreed to accept up to 24,000 Venezuelan immigrants in Mexico by air travel, who can show proof of sponsorship in the United States.
It was the latest move by the Biden administration to build on an expulsion policy that it has publicly avoided but continues to use as a stick to keep immigrants out of the southwest border. While Governor Greg Abbott and other senior Republicans attacked Biden for his so-called “open borders” policy ahead of the midterm elections, the new expulsions showed the administration is leaning toward a more hawkish approach to the recent influx of immigrants.
In El Paso, the municipal government has been moving hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants — legally recognized to pursue their status in the United States — every day to New York and Chicago, in an effort to prevent new arrivals from ending up homeless on the city’s streets.
The humanitarian crisis at the border has now spread to Juarez, a Mexican city that is now used to hosting aliens expelled by the United States this weekend. international bridge..
Juarez saw thousands of Cubans, Central Americans and Haitians establish temporary residence here during the years of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocol. The Mexican government offered them work permits, and many took jobs maquiladora assembly plants or started their own business with seed money from relatives working in the United States
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Mexican government orders handed over to hundreds of expelled Venezuelans on Friday are alarming migrant shelter and aid workers. With few resources and, in many cases, no close contacts in the United States to provide financial support, it was not clear how the immigrants would be able to “leave Mexican territory from the nearest southern border,” as the document commanded.
Local, state and federal authorities are scheduled to meet later on Saturday as the number of expelled Venezuelans is expected to increase, said Enrique Valenzuela, director of the Chihuahua State Migrant Assistance Agency.
“The information we have so far raises more doubts and questions than answers for a population that needs to make decisions about their future,” Valenzuela said.
Mendoza said he is asking his countrymen to change their thinking. He said there are job opportunities in Mexico, too — especially in Juarez, where hundreds of factories are always looking for more workers. But he said Mexico needed to present a chance.
“Those who have the desire to work, should have the opportunity simply to live a life within this country,” he said. “Venezuelans are hardworking workers. The Mexican government should give them the same opportunities it has given others.”
Juan Carlos Quevedo, 31, listened to Mendoza’s impromptu sermon with his head bowed. He worked as a fisherman in the coastal state of Falcon until he could no longer buy or find gasoline for the boats he was working on, in a country whose vast oil reserves made it among the richest in the region.
He crossed in the hours before the US-Mexico deal, and the border patrol brought him back to Juarez on Friday and had no idea what he was going to do next. He carried a backpack with a roll of toilet paper and a plastic bag with the only pose he’s kept with him since leaving Venezuela: a palm-sized laminated card with the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe.
“All we did to get here,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s hard, but we’re here.”
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