As illegal crossings decline along the U.S. border, Mexican migrants become desperate

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — Desperate and exhausted, the migrants gathered around a tree that offered them some shade from the merciless sun.

They came from Latin American countries, including Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru and Venezuela. Some of them were parents traveling with young children, especially toddlers. Others were young men. Some teenagers appeared to be unaccompanied minors traveling without their parents.

All shared a common goal: to enter the United States, which was only meters away. But in their path were miles of barbed wire and other barriers erected by the state of Texas under the leadership of Gov. Greg Abbott to deter migrants from illegally crossing the border into the United States.

“They are trying to kill us,” one of the migrants said in Spanish, showing CBS News cameras how sharp the wire could be.

Some said they tried repeatedly to cross the barriers, to no avail. At one point, the migrants crowded around the cameras to describe the austere conditions in the makeshift camp they had set up near the U.S. border with tents and blankets.

They said they had been sleeping near this tree for days, some up to two weeks, braving the elements for a chance to enter the United States. “We have no food. We have no water,” said a Venezuelan woman carrying a bag. said a little child in Spanish.

René, a migrant from Honduras, said he had been sleeping outside for 15 days, after traveling to Mexico with his young daughters, aged 3 and 9. He pointed to a brush-filled area where they were sleeping, using blankets to protect themselves from the weather. cold temperatures at night and in the morning.

“I don’t sleep at night,” René said in Spanish, noting that he only closes his eyes intermittently to make sure his daughters are OK.

Illegal crossings are decreasing

Illegal crossings along the U.S. southern border have fallen more than 40% this year since reaching record levels in December. In April, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded about 129,000 illegal crossings, the second consecutive monthly decline, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News. This trend has defied historical trends: migration typically peaks in spring.

Yet tens of thousands of migrants are estimated to be waiting in Mexico, in places like Ciudad Juárez, where shelter space is limited and conditions are sometimes dire.

Many Mexicans are waiting to get an appointment to enter the United States at an official port of entry through a Biden administration program powered by a smartphone app known as CBP One. But the process is limited to 1,500 places per day. And the demand in Mexico is much higher.

Faced with wait times that often stretch for months, some migrants, like those in the makeshift encampment, become desperate and decide to try to cross the border illegally into the United States. But first they must cross the barriers in Texas to surrender to federal Border Patrol agents, the first step in an asylum process that lasts years.

Karina Breceda, who oversees migrant shelters in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, called the barricades erected by Texas “inhumane,” noting that she helped some migrants, including children, who were cut off by the barbed wire .

“The United States is the greatest country in the world,” Breceda said. “I think we can have a policy that treats this situation with dignity.”

But on the U.S. side of the border, Sergeant Eliot Torres of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the wire is meant to serve as a “signal” warning migrants not to enter the United States between official ports of entry. , which constitutes a federal crime. Texas also sought to make the act a state crime through a law known as SB4, but federal courts have blocked the measurement at the request of the Biden administration.

“The inhuman part is in the… optics, right?” Torres said that near part of the border near El Paso, Texas had been fortified with barbed wire and additional fencing. “That’s what people perceive.”

Torres acknowledged that migrants could be cut off by the wire. When asked if this was part of the deterrence objective, he replied: “Yes.” But Torres noted that Texas authorities are providing medical aid to injured or distressed migrants.

“We’re here to protect our border, but we’re also not going to… let someone stand there and get hurt,” Torres said.

Abbott and other Texas officials have credited their actions — from razor wire to arrests of migrants accused of trespassing in the state — for the sharp decline in migrant crossings in recent months, which has been more acute in the Lone Star State than in Arizona and California. .

But federal officials say the main catalyst is Mexican authorities’ aggressive crackdown on U.S.-bound migrants, who have stepped up efforts to prevent migrants from boarding trains and buses that would take them closer to the border American. They are also deporting some migrants to southern Mexico.

Yet some migrants like René have managed to reach northern Mexico despite the crackdown and are willing to wait indefinitely for a chance to reach the United States.

“We came for the American dream,” he said.