Asylum seekers pushed new extremes in Mexico after the start of the repression of Trump’s border

Atotonilo de Tula, Mexico (AP) – When Dayana Castro learned that the American asylum meeting that she was waiting for more than a year was canceled in an instant, she had no doubt: she was heading for northern anyway.

The 25 -year -old migrant, her husband and their children aged 4 and 7 had nothing at home in Venezuela. They had already traveled the Perilux Darien Gap Jungle Divide Colombia and Panama and the criminal groups that attack migrants like them.

Castro was one of the tens of thousands of migrants across Mexico with appointments to ask for American asylum at the border scheduled until February until President Donald Trump took office and published a series decrees to strengthen border security and the migration of Slash. We finished the Use of the CBP One application This had allowed nearly a million people, many of whom seeking asylum, to enter legally in the United States since January 2023.

“We will continue. We cannot go home after all that we have experienced, after all the countries we fought, only to abandon now, “she said in a small refuge in central Mexico next to a Line of the merchandise train which they were rolling north.

Now migrants as it adapts to a new and uncertain. Many remain determined to reach the United States by more dangerous means, to set up freight trains, to hire smugglers and to dodge the authorities. Some have lined up in Mexico’s refugee offices to seek asylum in this country, while others were considering finding a path thoroughly.

Trump said a national emergency on the American-Mexican border on Monday and announced its intention to Send us troops And restrict refugees and asylum, saying he wants to stop illegal entrance and border crime. Measures follow a drop illegal crosspieces In recent months.

Supporters of The CBP One application That people like Castro were trying to enter legally say that it brought order to a chaotic border. Critics say he was magnet for more people to come.

Adam Isacson, analyst of defense monitoring for the organization of human rights Washington Office on Latin America, said that Trump’s repression against illegal immigration will surely dissuade migrants in the short term, but will have also humanitarian cascading consequences.

People with valid asylum allegations can die in their own country, he said, while migrants fleeing countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti who cannot go easily to them can end up floating around “completely unprotected” Americas. Isacson and other analysts expect Trump policies will lead to increased smugglers and push migrants – many of which are children And families – on a more dangerous land to avoid capture.

Tuesday, Castro won his mind around the fact that continuing after his appointment with the American authorities on February 18, it would probably mean putting his life, and the life of his family, at risk as Cartels extort and kidnap more and more vulnerable migrants.

“There is the train, the cartels, the migration police, and they make you pay them all,” she said, nourishing the bread to her children next to a small shelter where they were sleeping. “But if we don’t put ourselves in danger, we will never arrive.”

Along the southern border of Mexico with Guatemala, another group of migrants in Tapachula adopted a different approach.

Cuban migrants Rosalí Martínez were waiting online outside the Mexican commission for the help of refugees in the swallowing city of the south. Travel with her child, she had hoped to find her husband in the United States

Now she was waiting for her time, joining an increasing number of migrants who have searched for asylum in Mexico in recent years, temporarily due to American or more permanent trips.

Like many Cubans in recent years, Martíneze was running away from an economic crisis in a spiral.

“I’m going to stay here and see what’s going on,” she said. But “I don’t go back to Cuba. I will become a Mexican citizen, but there is no way that I return to Cuba.

Others like Jomaris Figuera, 42, and her husband want to throw in the towel after years trying to build a life outside Venezuela, where economic and political crises have prompted nearly 8 million people to flee in recent years.

They spent more than four years Cross the gap of Darien. They waited almost a year and a half for a legal path to the United States in a wooden refuge in a crime migrant camp in the center of Mexico City.

But due to Venezuela’s crises, they have no passport. And without money, they fear that their only return path moves south through Mexico and Central America, and the walking days through the same robust mountains of the Darien Gap.

Everything would be better than staying in Mexico, said Fig.

“It’s like giving up everything after all that happened to us,” she said. “But after trying to make an appointment, and that happens, we abandoned.”

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Clemente reported in Tapachula, Mexico. Janetsky reported to Atotonilco de Tula and Mexico.