Jimmy Muñoz has just turned himself in to U.S. border police after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. Its silhouette is drawn in the distance, in the middle of a green plain. Now walk to a checkpoint where they will decide their fate.
"I hope I can stay in this country," says the 29-year-old Ecuadorian. "But I am with doubts and fears that they will accept me," he adds, while pointing to an orange awning about 300 meters away, where a crowd is seen.
Although it is already on U.S. soil, near the city of Brownsville, Texas, it has a barbed wire fence in front and then a metal fence about four meters high.
In Brownsville, the flow of migrants crossing from the neighboring Mexican city of Matamoros does not stop. In the vicinity, military vehicles are deployed.
In the area of El Paso, Texas, it stops from Ciudad Juárez, in Mexico. AFP Photo
Regulations
Like Jimmy Muñoz, thousands of migrants have been turning themselves in to authorities in recent weeks, fearful that the change in U.S. border regulations scheduled for midnight Thursday could complicate their entry into the country, according to their own testimonies.
Many of them are Venezuelans, but there are also other Latin Americans and Asians.
At checkpoints, authorities separate men from women and transfer them to different processing centres.
"When they detain us, they take good care of us. They take us to a cell, they bring us food, and a process of questions begins, of DNA testing, a routine process I imagine for immigrants. After that, they give you freedom," said Rossi Carrillo, 26, in downtown Brownsville.
"They give us a paper for an appointment with the judge [to decide whether or not it is possible to stay in the country]. They gave it to me within a year," adds Rossi, who comes from Venezuela and spends the night near the Brownsville bus station.
Others were summoned within a few months, and some within three years.
In Brownsville, Texas, migrants who managed to cross into the United States. AFP Photo
AFP spoke with several migrants who were allowed to enter. All of them had their names and contacts and addresses taken from family members or friends waiting for them in the United States. Rossi and her husband await them in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jose Luis Aular, a 38-year-old Venezuelan, says he was asked by authorities to download an app to track his whereabouts. From time to time you should take a picture in the place of the country where you are and upload it.
Title 42
Between October 2022 and March 2023, more than 200,000 people were processed in Texas under Title 42, a health regulation activated in the Trump era by covid-19, which allows those who cross the border without accepting their immigration requests to be expelled. This provision will be lifted on Thursday.
In that same period, about 453,000 people were processed in Texas under Title 8, a specific immigration regulation that allows you to apply for asylum, but also authorizes removal, although not summary but expedited.
Migrants in Tijuana, Baja California. AFP Photo
Title 8 is feared by migrants because someone expelled under it can end up with a criminal recordor a five-year ban on applying for legal entry into the United States.
On Wednesday, U.S. border police issued a clear warning: those who attempt to enter illegally "will continue to be removed to Mexico or their country of origin."
"Those migrants who cannot be removed under Title 42, and do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States, will be placed in deportation proceedings under Title 8," he said in a message broadcast in Spanish on social networks.
Rossi Carrillo is glad he was able to enter. "They were things of God, because not everyone has the same luck. There are women with children who have returned them," she says.
"My dream was to be here and as a second goal is to bring my children and my mom," he says.
She holds Niña, a poodle dog that accompanied her on her journey through eight countries, including the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama.
"The jungle spent walking, it came out dirty, it swam in the rivers, we had it with pure serum because the food ran out," he says. The pet was confiscated, but he later recovered it with the help of a foundation.
Still at the border line, Jimmy Muñoz tells why he left Ecuador: "We have been fleeing, they want to kill us. I can't have a business because they extort us. I feel good that I crossed."
AFP Agency
PB
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