The testimonies of those who have just crossed into the US: "I ask God to let me in"

Honduran Ruth Bautista pleads with the Border Patrol to let her be in the country.

He comes to meet his 12-year-old son again.

"I have been asking God for immigration to let me in

.

"

He is one of the 200 people who have crossed the Rio Grande to Roma, Texas, in just a period of three hours on Saturday night, exacerbating the immigration crisis that has been experienced on the border since the arrival of Joe Biden to the White House.

This migrant came with her 7-year-old daughter María López.

Her husband died five months ago and her son was left alone in the United States.

That is why they have walked thousands of kilometers to reach the border.

"I hardly cry, I'm brave. I tell her mommy, don't cry,"

says the minor to Edgar Muñoz, a reporter for Noticias Telemundo in the middle of the night.

Attracted by the call effect of the new president, Joe Biden, dozens of parents with young children are driven by coyotes late at night.

But most will be returned as the border is closed.

[Mexico sends thousands of troops to stop the arrival of migrants from Central America]

The number of family members of undocumented immigrants who crossed the country's southern border went from 7,000 in January to about 19,000 in February, according to ICE data. 

"We are hungry, sometimes we sleep in the mountains. We left on January 25,"

says Karla Mejía, who brings two children aged four and seven.

The boats do not stop disembarking migrants during the night.

In one of them comes a nine-year-old girl from Talanca, Honduras, who came without a family, although accompanied by a group of people, in search of her father's cousin.

"What scared me the most was walking along the river. I wanted to be with my cousin

.

"

"Where do you live?" The journalist asks: "In the United States," he answers.

The situation on the border is monopolizing the political debate in Washington, where Biden promised a more humane treatment to immigrants after the term of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), but they are finding it difficult to handle the arrival of undocumented immigrants, many of them unaccompanied minors.

A boat with migrants disembarks this weekend in Roma, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande.Edgar Muñoz

Republican congressmen and Trump himself have cataloged the situation on the border with Mexico as a crisis, which they have blamed on the policies of Biden, who has dismantled many of the heavy-handed measures of his predecessor, which according to them has caused the arrival more immigrants to the border, which remains closed due to the pandemic.

[Many of the adolescent migrants who cross the border seek to reconnect with their parents]

Many of these migrants seek asylum in the country, something that was launched a month ago in the Mexican city of Tijuana, Baja California, the point of the border where the MPPs began to be implemented in January 2019, the Protection Protocols of Migrants (MPP)

With this program, implemented by former President Trump, more than 71,000 asylum seekers, most of them Central Americans, were returned to Mexico.

Biden, vowed to end his early days in the White House.

"For necessity"

Another group of Hondurans who crossed the river on Saturday night by boat came with children.

One of them led him to the sword.

"We came out of necessity. I did not lose my house, but I did lose my jobs. I have to find a place to work and that's why I come,"

says one.

"In Honduras there is nothing. It is the only door," adds Honduran Juan Amaya.

Why are more unaccompanied migrant minors arriving at the border?

March 19, 202102: 14

Most of these families will probably be deported because the border is not open, something that the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) reiterated this Sunday, Alejandro Mayorkas, who asked for time to rebuild the immigration system in an orderly manner. and urged those who are thinking of starting the journey to the country's border not to do so.

"Give us time to build an orderly system that will allow you to make your request under United States law without undertaking the journey and risking your lives,"

Mayorkas said, addressing those who intend to emigrate to the United States, in an interview with the CNN television network.

The country's head of immigration added that although the Administration will continue to expel families and single adults who cross irregularly, it will not send unaccompanied minors back.

[United States Announces Opening of New Facility for Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors in Texas]

"We will not expel to the Mexican desert, for example, three orphaned children," clarified Mayorkas, despite the warning that they should not go to the border.

Mayorkas traveled to the El Paso, Texas border with Mexico on Friday amid the crisis over the arrival of immigrant minors.

A day earlier, officials from the President's Administration admitted that more than 14,000 immigrant minors who crossed the border from Mexico alone remain in the custody of government agencies.

Migrants, mostly from Central America, wait in line to cross the border at the Gateway International Bridge from Matamoros, Mexico, to Brownsville, Texas, on March 15, 2021.Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images

These sources specified that 9,562 children and adolescents remain in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, in English) and another 4,500 are guarded by the Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP, for its acronym in English), which has in charge of the Border Patrol.

Mayorkas indicated that they are working 24 hours a day to transfer minors who are in CBP facilities, which are not equipped to accommodate them.

And he accused the government of former President Trump of having caused the current situation.

[The Government will contact the families of migrant children alone to speed up their reception]

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who accompanied Mayorkas in El Paso, "saw a crying 13-year-old girl who had been expelled to Mexico during the Trump Administration," said the DHS secretary.

"What we are doing is addressing humanitarian needs in a way that reflects our values ​​and our principles as a country," he said.

On Friday Murphy tweeted that they had visited an immigration processing center at the border in El Paso, where hundreds of children and teens were "crammed into large open rooms."

"In a corner, I tried not to cry when a 13-year-old girl explained, sobbing non-stop, through a translator,

how terrified she was after being separated from her grandmother

 and without (being accompanied by) her parents," she said.

Murphy clarified that currently the authorities are not removing minors from their parents at the border, as the Trump administration did, although if the adults who accompany the children are not their parents, they are separating them from them.

Mayorkas promised this Sunday that the Biden Executive will not abandon vulnerable minors.

"We are executing our plan but it takes a while," he warned.

Asked how long it will take to implement such a plan, Mayorkas said it will be "as soon as possible."

Children play as families of asylum seekers wait outside the border port of El Chaparral to wait to cross into the United States in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on February 19, 2021.AFP via Getty Images

"And let me add a reason why it is so difficult and challenging, and it is not just because the Trump Administration trashed our system and we have to rebuild it from scratch, but it is also because of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic, that makes operations more difficult. "

detailed.

To alleviate the situation, the Government has signed a contract for 86.9 million dollars to house some families of undocumented immigrants who come from the Mexican side of the border in hotels near the border, according to official sources.

At the moment, 1,200 families will be housed in this way in areas of Texas and Arizona, said the Axios media.

["We are not going to separate families," says the Secretary of National Security about the migrants who arrive at the border]

In a statement sent to Efe this Sunday by the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE, for its acronym in English) , the acting director of this agency, Tae Johnson, explained that they have signed a short-term contract with the Texas NGO Endeavors.

The goal of that agreement is

"to provide temporary accommodation and processing services for families who have not been expelled

and who are therefore in the process of

being removed

from the US," he said.

Johnson added that the contract includes 1,239 beds and other services, such as medical care and coronavirus testing.

"The border is not open," he stressed. "Most individuals continue to be expelled under the public health authority of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, for its acronym in English)."

Axios specified that the contract between ICE and Endeavors is six months long, although it can be extended.

ICE is tasked with the custody of undocumented migrants who cross the border after they are detained by the Border Patrol.

According to Axios, that agency is transforming its detention centers for families into express management points in order to release those people within 72 hours.

["We couldn't breathe": A mother and daughter drive through Mexico in a truck]

However, the fact that he is accommodating them in hotels indicates that ICE is having a difficult time housing the growing number of people in its custody.

Meanwhile, the incessant trickle of thousands of migrants from Central America continues to reach the country's border.

What is the hardest thing about this?

"

I come trusting in God. May they give us the opportunity to stay. The situation in our country is very difficult and we do not want them to return us

,

"

Honduran Karen Maldonado explains tearfully to a reporter from this station, as she landed after getting off a boat after crossing the Rio Grande.

With information from CNN, Axios and EFE.