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Mexico City: Migrants from Central, South America and Africa who have made it here are already close to the US border.
But many of them don't make the last step to the United States they long for - and live in Mexico under inhumane conditions.
In Casa Tochan, the accommodation of an independent aid organization, employees take care of the people.
Most of them originally come from the crisis-ridden Caribbean state of Haiti and have been looking for a better life in the Dominican Republic, Brazil or Chile in recent years.
With the Biden government, they initially saw momentum that it was now easier to get into the USA than under Trump.
Gabriela Hernandez, Casa Tochan:
»Because of the large number of people from Haiti, the reception centers are completely overwhelmed. All emergency shelters in Mexico City are overcrowded. There has never been anything like it. Otherwise, the authorities always reacted when the migrants arrived on their treks. But the Haitians were left to their own devices.”
The Casa Tochan
offers migrants support: food, a place to sleep, legal advice and psychological help.
Gabriela Hernandez, Casa Tochan:
»We had to grow out of necessity. We set up a new dormitory and rented an apartment nearby to use as an external dormitory. We couldn't leave people on the street, whole families were in need.«
Tens of thousands of Haitians fled violence and poverty in their country after the 2010 earthquake.
Until 2018 they could still enter Chile without a visa.
But with a new government came new immigration restrictions.
Discrimination against people from Haiti increased.
Many moved on from Chile to Mexico in order to get to the USA from there.
29-year-old Andy Herry fled a small village in Haiti, via Brazil and finally to Mexico City in 2014.
Andy Herry, Haitian:
»From Campo Grande we drove across Brazil, came to Bolivia, then Peru, Ecuador and Colombia to the town of Necoclí. We stayed there for a week. We were lucky and got a boat ticket to cross the Darién jungle. We walked for five days through the middle of the jungle. In Nicaragua we had to pay the border police $150 each. Then in Guatemala we had to pay another $250 to criminals just to cross the border.«
More than 130,000 people sought refuge in Mexico in 2021, according to official statistics from the Department of Immigration.
With almost 52,000 applications, Haitians made the most asylum applications in Mexico last year.
Almost 90,000 of these were registered in the border town of Tapachula.
Yuriria Salvador - Human rights organization Fray Matías
»In 2021 more and more people came from Haiti, after an increase in 2018 and 2019. You can feel it, Tapachula is a small town. We see that entire families apply for asylum and that people who want to renew their papers are repeatedly turned away by the authorities.«
According to the Association of Haitian Refugees in Tapachula, the Mexican authorities have been discriminatory and racist towards them.
They used violence against women and children and confiscated documents and passports.
Human rights organizations accuse the authorities of distributing people to other cities without giving them sufficient information.
Wesly Luc, spokesman for the Haitian community:
"We worry. We're supposed to be taken somewhere without any information. We cannot move freely. Even those who have the money to get out of here can't. They are not allowed to buy tickets. Many of us sleep on the street in front of the Olympic Stadium or in the Colonia Palacios. Sometimes with no food, no facilities to wash or a toilet. There are people who have been waiting since October or November of last year and they still haven't gotten an appointment with the authorities. This is a violation of human rights.«
There are now regular violent clashes in Tapachula between security forces and people desperately waiting for their papers.
Hundreds of them try to reach Mexico City in caravans and take their fate into their own hands.
The authorities try to prevent them - often with violence.
The Mexican government is sticking to "Quedate en Mexico" - translated: "Stay in Mexico".
The program was introduced jointly with the USA under Donald Trump.
It allows the US authorities to immediately send asylum seekers back to Mexico.
There they are left to their own devices by the Mexican authorities and have to wait for the duration of their trial - often months or years, often in vain in the end.
Henry Soliza, Ghanaian:
I am alone here, my whole family is in Ghana. I applied for asylum here in Mexico. I will get a health insurance card that will allow me to go to the doctor. I haven't received it yet but they say it will arrive in a few months. This is not my ultimate goal yet. I'm going to the US. But the government is preventing us from progressing. They keep changing the required documents, forcing us to go back and forth all the time. I'm here because I have no other option, but as soon as they give me the chance, I'll head straight to the United States."
In Tapachula, the consequences of this strict immigration policy can be seen on the streets and in the overcrowded shelters.
The only thing left for the tens of thousands of people from Haiti, Central America and Africa is to wait and hope.
Because "stay in Mexico" is taken literally by the authorities - in Mexico as well as in the USA.