Asylum-seekers blocked at Texas border say Mexican officials demanding money
Asylum-seekers blocked at Texas border say Mexican officials demanding money
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times
Posted at 2:53 PM Updated at 2:53 PM
MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — Asylum-seekers funneled to bridge crossings at the Texas border are being blocked from approaching the U.S. side, forced on waiting lists overseen by Mexican officials.
The asylum-seekers and immigrant advocates say that has put them at risk of extortion, discrimination and deportation. Many of them have told of Mexican officials demanding money to let them pass and of watching others, further down the list, cross ahead of them.
In Matamoros, a city across from Brownsville, the list is kept on a clipboard in a plastic case on the newer of two border bridges. Though Mexican officials maintain the list, U.S. officers decide how many asylum-seekers cross. An individual familiar with the Mexican immigration system, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said U.S. officials choose who crosses based on nationality and other characteristics.
U.S. law says immigrants can present themselves to request asylum at border crossings or inside the country after entering illegally. But as thousands of Central Americans approached the border this month, President Donald Trump announced that those crossing illegally would be denied asylum. This week, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked that ban.
But the judge’s ruling didn’t address the administration’s efforts to stop asylum-seekers at southern border bridges. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they have run out of space to process them at border holding areas.
The agency has stationed officers at bridge midpoints to prevent asylum-seekers from entering the U.S. The migrants must add their names to waiting lists in Mexico, a process U.S. officials call “queue management.”
As of last week, waiting lists were being used at all major crossings in Texas, said Rick Pauza, a Laredo-based spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Across the border from El Paso, Mexican officials in Juarez cleared 300 migrants from border bridges last week, sent them to shelters and created a waiting list, said Shaw Drake, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. Asylum-seekers’ numbers on the list were written in marker on their arms.
“They’re creating the circumstances under which that’s necessary,” Drake said. About 20 of the asylum-seekers were being admitted to the U.S. daily from Juarez, he said.
To the east, where Texas’ Rio Grande Valley borders the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, U.S. and Mexican immigration officials began a joint campaign in September against cartel violence and corruption. But U.S. authorities delegated management of asylum-seeker waiting lists to Mexican counterparts. The lists are not made public, and they are not monitored by U.S. officials, Customs and Border Protection said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it “processes undocumented persons as expeditiously as possible,” and denied that it was involved in selecting who enters from the lists.
“Nationality has absolutely no bearing on the processing” of asylum-seekers, and those on the lists are “processed on a first-come, first-serve basis,” the agency said.
The agency said it “does take into consideration persons with medical emergencies, unaccompanied alien children, the disabled, and gives priority as we can, bearing in mind the day-to-day availability of resources, case complexity, holding space, port volume and enforcement actions.”
Jessica Zamora, an 18-year-old Cuban who is seven months pregnant, was still waiting at the foot of the Matamoros bridge last week, more than 25 days after U.S. officials allowed her mother and 13-year-old brother across. The officials didn’t consider her part of the same family, Zamora said. Two other pregnant women were also waiting to cross.
“We wait here while others pass because we don’t have money,” Zamora said.
Mexican immigration officials in Matamoros said they try to limit the number of asylum-seekers waiting at the bridge to 10, ferrying the rest to a shelter across town, but the number swelled recently as migrants refused to leave, afraid of missing a chance to cross.
Two dozen migrants from Central America, Cuba, Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Russia and Venezuela camped at the foot of the bridge last week without food, water or medical care beyond occasional visits by the Mexican Red Cross, even as temperatures dipped to freezing.
They said immigration officials had not secured secure the bridges, leaving them vulnerable to extortion.
When they complained, Mexican immigration officials threatened to force them to leave, including when they were being interviewed by The Los Angeles Times.
“See how they talk to us? ‘Go’ like dogs,” said Yaneisi Jinarte, a teacher from Cuba.
Two other Cuban asylum-seekers said Mexican immigration officials demanded they pay to cross the city’s older bridge this fall. They refused and were still waiting to cross last week.
Their claims were being investigated, according to the Mexican individual who spoke anonymously. He said immigrants are not supposed to cross on the older bridge, where their names are not added to the list.
Cuban asylum-seeker Elvis Gonzalez Rodriguez said that when he arrived at the old bridge last week, a uniformed Mexican immigration official demanded he pay $1,000 to cross. Gonzalez, 23, refused, and the official made him leave.
“There’s a lot of corruption here. It’s the responsibility of Mexican officials to protect immigrants. I want to come the correct, legal way,” the electrician from Havana said as he sat on the old bridge again on Nov. 14, a few feet from two U.S. customs officers.
Another Cuban asylum-seeker said a uniformed Mexican immigration official demanded $500 to get her across the old bridge after she arrived at Matamoros’ airport in mid-October. She said she gave the official her passport and $300 at the airport, then got nervous.
“He didn’t seem trustworthy, so I left,” said Rosa Maria, 50, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used because she feared for her safety.
She said Cuban asylum-seekers have called her cellphone after crossing the old bridge to say they paid Mexican officials $100 to $300 each to bypass the list.
U.S. volunteers and immigrant advocacy groups alerted Mexican authorities that asylum-seekers have been forced to pay to cross the bridge since June.
“They are. I know that’s a fact,” said Michael Seifert, an ACLU border advocacy strategist in Brownsville.
“It’s only gotten worse. It’s gotten more expensive.
The Cubans are targeted because they have money.”
https://www.statesman.com/news/20181...emanding-money
