American legislation is tailwind for migrants
2022.12.28 01:24
American legislation is tailwind for migrants
Budrigannews.com – Hundreds of migrants in northern Mexico were taking matters into their own hands to sneak into the United States even before the Supreme Court of the United States made the decision on Tuesday to maintain a measure designed to discourage illegal border crossings.
Title 42, a contentious pandemic-era law, was supposed to end on Dec. 21, but last-minute legal stays put border policy in limbo, leading a growing number of migrants to decide that crossing the border has little to lose anyway.
Groups of migrants from Venezuela and other countries targeted by Title 42 chose to flee rather than endure the uncertainty of the legal tug-of-war in U.S. courts after spending days in chilly border cities.
Jhonatan, a Venezuelan immigrant who sprinted across the border from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez into El Paso, Texas, with his wife and five children ranging in age from 3 to 16, said, “We ran, and we hid, until we managed to make it.”
Jhonatan stated over the phone that he had already been in Mexico for several months and had no intention of entering the United States illegally. He only used his first name.
However, he could not bear the thought of failing after a journey that had taken his family through the perilous jungles of Darien, Panama, up Central America, and into Mexico.
He told Reuters, “It would be the last straw to get here, and then they send us back to Venezuela.”
A group of Republican state attorneys general asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay a judge’s decision invalidating Title 42 on Tuesday. They had argued that removing it would lead to more people crossing the border.
During its February session, the court stated that it would hear arguments regarding whether the states could intervene to defend Title 42. By the end of June, a decision should be made.
Last week, images from Reuters showed migrants racing across a busy highway near the border, one of them barefoot and carrying a small child. This is the kind of risky crossing that worries advocates for migrants.
Fernando Garcia, director of the Border Network for Human Rights, stated, “We’re talking about people who come to request asylum… and they are still crossing the border in very dangerous ways.”
According to John Martin, the deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso, the majority of the migrants his shelter has taken in are illegal immigrants, including many Venezuelans.
“The majority were at one point documented; He stated, “Now I’m seeing it reverse.”
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A Venezuelan migrant in Ciudad Juarez who went by the name Antonio said on Tuesday, prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, that he was waiting to see if U.S. border surveillance would end in the hopes of earning money in the United States to send back home.
He stated, “We’re going to keep entering illegally if they don’t end Title 42.”
Others who were migrating along the border claimed to have exhausted all of their options elsewhere.
“We don’t have a future in Mexico,” Cesar, a Venezuelan migrant in Tijuana who did not give his last name, said as he explained why he had previously attempted to cross the border into the United States and plans to do so once more.
