A false rumor caused an avalanche of immigrants on Friday at a port of entry on the border between Mexico and the United States, with their suitcases and documents ready to request asylum, and, as a consequence, the temporary closure of one of the most active crossings and congested.
The information quickly circulated in the morning among hundreds of immigrants from a camp north of the Mexican city of Tijuana, in Baja California: border agents were going to allow them to cross into the United States at the San Ysidro port of entry.
By noon, dozens of families, many with children and young babies, began to accumulate at the entrance to the crosswalk that connects with San Diego.
Among the migrants were Mexicans and Central Americans, convinced that the way would be opened.
"They told us they would give us a chance," some repeated in videos shared by local media.
The United States stopped accepting asylum applications at international crossings in March 2020, with few exceptions, for an order related to the coronavirus pandemic known as Title 42.
As a result, tens of thousands of people are on waiting lists in Mexican border cities.
"They told me that a law was passed last night that allowed us from Chaparral to enter the country," a Honduran immigrant told the Tijuana daily El Sol.
A federal judge declared this Thursday that the federal government cannot limit the access of asylum seekers at the border alleging lack of resources to process them, thus ruling against what is known as
metering
, which reduces to a few dozen or hundreds of immigrants a day the opportunity to appear before the US authorities with your request.
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The rejection of the families in San Ysidro generated a protest by a dozen migrants, more than thirty, at noon, local media reported.
Given the advance of immigrants, officials from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency and the Municipal Police launched an operation to prevent a massive crossing: they extended a security fence and closed the passage pedestrian and several vehicle lanes.
Some immigrants resisted leaving the place and one of them, between 20 and 25 years old, was arrested, according to the newspaper La Jornada.
By two in the afternoon, the crossing had been partially closed and practically paralyzed.
The closure lasted an hour, but traffic did not immediately return to normal when it reopened.
The border crossing, open to US citizens and residents as well as immigrants with visas, among others, has a usual 60-minute delay for vehicles, according to CBP.
But after the temporary cut-off, the wait time more than doubled on Friday afternoon.
The incident occurs amid strong criticism of the Mexican authorities for the violent repression of migrants who try to move through the country to the United States.
At least three caravans have been violently disintegrated by the National Guard and the National Migration Institute of Mexico.
With information from NoticiasYa, La Jornada Baja California and El Sol de Tijuana.