Migrants from around the world remained determined Saturday to continue their journey through Mexico to the United States, even as the government has ordered a crackdown on temporary travel permits allowing them to make their way to the northern border.
Outside Tapachula’s City Hall, less than thirty minutes from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, a Venezuelan mother sat with her two daughters as her husband searched the town for any leads on where they could obtain a travel permit.
The woman said that her family had arrived Friday, just after the National Institute of Migration ordered its offices across the country to stop granting the temporary travel permits.
Still, she said, her family would do whatever was in their power to continue their journey northward.
“We sold everything we had to come here, and our children, they walked such a long time,” she said.
Amadou Diallo, 32, who had left military-run Guinea a month ago by flying to Brazil before traveling by bus to Mexico, shared the Venezuelan woman’s determination to make it to the Land of Opportunity by any means necessary.
“I would travel illegally, because we can’t return to Guinea,” he said, noting that the police killed at least seven people during nationwide protests this week. “When we [left], life [was] not tranquil.”
And migrants and Mexican officials alike are blaming the chaos and human suffering on one man: President Biden.
Andrés Ramírez, head of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid, said that Biden’s campaign rhetoric surrounding immigration was a “pull factor.”
“All the of the rhetoric from Biden, basically, in his campaign, and once he took office, it was very clear in the sense that he was more pro-migrant” than former President Donald Trump,” Ramírez said. “That was sort of a kind of incentive for many people.”
Immediately following his inauguration in 2021, Biden halted construction of Trump’s border wall and suspended the Remain in Mexico program, which made asylum seekers wait outside the US while their cases were decided.
This week, the administration ended Title 42, the pandemic-era rule that allowed US Customs and Border Patrol to immediately deport single adults who entered the country illegally – and immediately appealed when a federal judge issued an order that blocked immigration officials from releasing migrants without any requirement to appear in court – or any way to track them.
Throughout, the president has pledged to deport migrants following the expiration of Title 42 – while promising more opportunities for people to apply for asylum.
It has all added up to a steady stream of welcoming words from Washington that led millions to believe that America was ready to roll out the red carpet for them, several migrants told The Post.
Eden Aburto, 43, a carpenter from Nicaragua, said he’d heard on the news that Biden had promised to help those with injuries and illnesses. He said he was traveling to get spinal surgery in the United States that would allow him to again.
“I hope he’ll stay true to that,” Aburto said.
“Biden is worse than Trump,” said Irineo Mujica, head of the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. “With Trump, at least we have one coherent message: ‘We don’t want you here and we’ll take you out.’ [Biden] is encouraging migrants to come, legally or not, by having this double talk.” —>READ THE REST HERE
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