Thousands of migrants in Tijuana waited hopefully a year ago today at 9 in the morning, the time when Joe Biden assumed the presidency of the United States because it was the end of Donald Trump and the worst anti-immigrant measures in recent history American.
Recently inaugurated as president, Biden effectively suspended the Stay in Mexico program that day, which forced some 42,000 migrants to wait at the Mexican border for lethargic asylum processes that seemed endless to many migrants.
But the president said he would only accept from the border some 25,000 cases that were still pending in the Stay in Mexico program. With that news, the rest of the community would continue in uncertainty.
Less than two weeks later, on February 5, some migrant families they settled in a small makeshift camp of tents and some even outdoors, with babies on blankets that they spread on the sidewalk.
They had camped in the same place where throughout the era Trump presented themselves as registered in Stay in Mexico to cross the border in shifts, in the vicinity of the El Chaparral pedestrian checkpoint, or West Pedestrian Crossing in San Ysidro, California.
None of these families they had signed up for Stay in Mexico during the Trump administration and therefore had no opportunity to cross to apply for asylum, but they insisted that President Biden had said that they were going to “write them down to go” to California.
A well-known politician who had just assumed the position of head of migrant communities in the Tijuan government A then explained to Real America News that Biden had said that he would increase the number of refugees in the fiscal year.
In effect, the president had signed an order on February 4 to maintain in 15,000 the number of refugees it would admit in the fiscal year, through September of 2021, and increase it to 125,000 from October.
“They (the migrants) found out about this news and wanted to come camping to be the first ones to be touched when the United States government begins to receive those 000, 000”, pastor Albert Rivera, director of the Ágape shelter, told Real America News, who was already beginning to take migrants from his shelter. who wanted to camp in El Chaparral.
Soon the news spread and more families began to arrive. They tried to keep the path to the pedestrian checkpoint clear to avoid incidents with the authorities. But then the pandemic hit the region.
The Trump administration closed the West Pedestrian Port of Entry as part of restrictions on non-essential border crossings, causing migrant families to spread out to fill end of March with about 3,500 people completely the esplanade of the pedestrian crossing.
Along with the restrictions, Trump imposed the measure Title 42, which prohibited border agents from receiving asylum requests and authorized them to immediately expel migrants, often through the same border point through which they have just entered the country, with the argument to prevent covid infections.
After receiving only the pending cases of Stay in Mexico, the Biden administration also hid behind Title 42 to prevent migrants from seeking asylum, froze the process.
However, in April 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a lawsuit against the Biden administration, which agreed to receive a daily quota of 25 from the most vulnerable cases of migrants at the border.
They began to crossing people who required urgent help due to diseases such as cancer, high-risk deliveries, pregnant women who were about to give birth, persecuted people who had fled their places of origin to reach the border where they were wanted, among other types of cases .
But the Biden administration suspended the asylum process again in June, once again with the justification of the pandemic.
After 15 months of restrictions on non-essential border crossings, the Biden administration finally decided to end that ban before the sales season between Black Friday and the Day of the Three Kings.
The incoming mayor of Tijuana, Montserrat Caballero, ordered in anticipation to fence the camp with barbed wire, forced all migrants to surrender their identity to receive a photo credential.
The Tijuana government also began joint surprise reviews, and if someone left their tent to go out to work at night, the authorities destroyed their belongings and forbade them to return to the camp. Since then they no longer allow more migrants to arrive.
Since the first days of November, the mayor’s office also ordered to cut off the electricity supply to the camp; reported that, in his opinion, by leaving some 700 people without electricity, he prevented a potential accident that had never happened in the previous nine months.
The attempts to evacuate the migrants without directly using force – there are human rights observers – since then they have not stopped.
Officials from Baja California met on Tuesday, from the city of Tijuana, a pastor, shelter director and community representatives in the camp, wanted to convince the migrants to leave the place in exchange for offering them a place with food, medical visits and presumed legal advice.
“We are not going to accept, we do not trust this government,” the representative of the Honduran migrants in the camp told Real America News.
The distrust is based on the fact that the Tijuana government opened a new, tidy shelter and invited families from the camp to move into this place where they would have clean beds, hot showers, food, safe urity.
But they were never told that they would be housed for only three days and a maximum of one week, and then they would be asked to vacate, even if they had to stay on the street, because when they tried to return to the camp they were no longer readmitted.
“We already know that this is what the government calls help, deceiving you to divide us”, said the representative. He explained that they will remain in place as long as possible.