JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Fabiola Guzman washes clothes over a communal sink at a Juarez shelter and ponders what’s next after President Donald Trump shut down asylum options for her family.
The Venezuelan mom, her husband and kindergarten-aged son were on their way to the border when the Trump administration declared a national immigration emergency and canceled appointments on the CBP One app.
That leaves her family few options. One of them is to go back to Venezuela.
“The American dream is over. It is gone,” Guzman said. “Some made it, some did not. All you can do is keep fighting for the things you want wherever you end up – here or there.”
Guzman said she and her husband are trying to get Mexican work permits so they can save money for a return trip to South America that involves travel over seven countries.
She is not alone.
The Rev. Juan Fierro, director of Good Samaritan migrant shelter, said several families from South and Central America have left the refuge since Trump took office on Jan. 20.
He also said few new families have arrived at the shelter since, and the mass deportations that advocates on both sides of the border feared would lead to a humanitarian resources crisis also have not materialized.
In fact, the shelter’s occupancy has fallen 20% in the past three weeks.
“As soon as they canceled CBP One some people said, ‘I’m tired, I’m going back home,’ and they went back to their place of origin. However, many have said, ‘I’m leaving,’ but they just go to another border city or look for ways to cross into the U.S. without authorization.”
Asylum-seekers no longer welcomed
Online asylum appointments became a primary tool for the Biden administration to manage a historical high flow of migrants coming to the U.S. Almost a million asylum-seekers entered the country through ports of entry in under two years; most were released into the country with a Notice to Appear in immigration court at a future date.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration referred to those seeking appointments as “inadmissible aliens.”
“On Jan. 20, Customs and Border Protection ended the use of CBP One app to schedule appointments for inadmissible aliens,” the agency said in its monthly operational report. “The number of inadmissible aliens encountered by CBP at ports of entry along the southwest border dropped 93 percent in the 11 days after Jan. 20, compared to the 11 days prior.”
Christian Moncada had an asylum appointment in El Paso on Jan. 21. He and his family were turned back at the Paso del Norte port of entry a day after Trump canceled all appointments.
“They told us they would not be receiving anyone and that we should go back the way we came. We missed it by one day,” the migrant from Honduras said.
Surrender becomes self-deportation tool
Moncada said his only hope is that the Trump administration ends the emergency and restores asylum, or that the U.S. courts force him to do so.
Otherwise, “we will go back. It’s expensive because we already paid a lot to come here,” he said. “We may turn ourselves in to (U.S.) immigration and see if they send us back.”
Humberto Martinez, a Mexican citizen who has stayed at Good Samaritan for several months, said he has seen entire families leave the shelter and travel back to their countries in recent days.
He has also learned of others who went to the border wall in El Paso with the intent of being apprehended and flown back because they did not have money for a return trip.
Deportation flights from the El Paso area to South and Central America – and at least one to Guantanamo naval base in Cuba – have been documented in the past two weeks.
But the bulk of the deportations from El Paso to Juarez have involved Mexican citizens that Mexico is obligated by its own laws to accept.
Martinez, who came to Juarez fleeing drug cartel violence in Michoacan, said he will not go back to danger nor risk being sent back to Mexico by the U.S. with a spot on his immigration record.
For him, waiting in Juarez or settling somewhere else in Mexico are his only alternatives.
That is also an option many migrants at Juarez shelters are pondering, Fierro said.
“Some went back to Mexico City because there is more work there. Others went to Tapachula because they stayed there several months when they came to Mexico,” he said.
He described the current situation on the U.S.-Mexico border as being on “pause.”
“People are not coming because there is no path to asylum. Trump said MPP (Migrant Protection Protocols) would be back, but it is not,” Fierro said. “What most people want is not MPP but something like CBP One that will let them in immediately. Being called and then made to wait in Mexico is not very favorable for them.
“As soon as we have that, we will see the flow (of migrants) we were expecting.”