Expelled to Mexico: The crisis of a city forced to deal with migrants sent back by the U.S.

Ciudad Juárez took years to come up with a system to handle the constant arrival of migrants. But the pandemic diminished local aid efforts just as the U.S. started returning thousands of migrants to Mexico under Title 42. Organizations on the border have rushed to house them.

Por:Patricia Clarembaux

<b>"They told us that we were going to a bigger shelter because they could not process our paperwork there, since there were too many of us,"</b> said Walter Lorenzo, 35, who traveled from Guatemala with his 5-months-pregnant wife and 3-year-old daughter. They were sitting on a bench in Ciudad Juárez on April 8, 2021, minutes after the U.S. had sent them back to Mexico under Title 42. The controversial policy of sending people back to Mexico was started under Donald Trump and Joe Biden has allowed it to continue during the pandemic.

<b>"They did not tell us that we were going to Mexico," </b>Lorenzo said.
<b>"We wanted to get the American Dream, but it's not easy."</b> The family was confused about how to get around Juárez, a city that they had never been, which made him sad. "This is not the dream we had, and nobody wants to be deported."

Walter and his family sat for a few minutes at the exit to the Lerdo bridge, where they crossed the border to Mexico. They said an acquaintance would come pick them up and allow them to stay in his house in Ciudad Juárez while they looked for a way to return to their country.
<b> "I wouldn't do this again. You suffer so much. And it's not worth it anymore," </b>he said, mentioning the weeks of hunger, thirst, and sleeping in crowded groups that it took for them to reach the United States.

This family had believed their smuggler, who told them that the United States was allowing people with children to enter the country. Walter's wife is now seven months pregnant, and their daughter often asks her parents to take her home.
<b>"That's why it's better for us to go back. Only God knows why we didn't make it," </b>he said. His daughter put a stuffed animal the Mexican officials gave her into a bag from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security containing some of the family's possessions.

<b>"We realized that we were in Mexico after we got out of the plane and saw the flag,"</b> said Marvin, a 37-year-old Guatemalan migrant who was traveling with his wife and 5-year-old daughter. Their smuggler told them that the U.S. was allowing families to enter the country. Marvin said his family fled from criminals who murdered his brother over a motorcycle and who he had reported to the police. "I was lying in my hammock one day and two people came to my house and started shooting." The U.S. authorities did not explain why they were sending him back to Mexico or give him a document explaining what would happen to people like him.
<b>"We didn't know why they sent us back. In McAllen, the Border Patrol officials said, 'Don't start complaining. You're not getting deported. </b>You're going to a shelter in Houston that belongs to a church, and there you're going to be able to argue your case."

<b>"Everything they told us was a life. They've tricked many people," </b>he said. Authorities in the U.S. did not allow him to explain why he was seeking asylum or why he had migrated.
<b>"They didn't let us say a single word. They ignored all our rights." </b>Marvin, who is staying at a temporary shelter of the municipal government of Ciudad Juárez, fears that their only option is to go back to Guatemala. "Maybe we just have to accept reality and wait to see what's next," he said.

<b>"They never told us that they were going to send us back," </b>said Christian García, a 22-year-old Honduran, minutes after being sent back to Mexico with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. They were placed on a plane from McAllen.
<b>"We asked and asked where they were taking us, and nobody told us anything."</b> He said they were told they were being moved at night on April 8, 2021, to El Paso so they could call their family members in the U.S. He and his family do not plan to return to Honduras. Their house was destroyed by Hurricane Iota. They are in debt because they borrowed money to pay for the trip.

Plastic bags given to migrants to hold their belongings before they are sent back to Mexico under Title 42. They have the insignia of the Department of Homeland Security and have been dropped on the street in Ciudad Juárez. These are the only items given to migrants who are expelled under Title 42.
<b>They are not given a date in which they can present their case before an immigration judge, </b>unlike the migrants who were previously sent back to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a policy started in 2019.
<b>The lack of information makes the wait seem longer, </b>since asylum-seekers do not know when the border might open.

<b>"I wanted to work in the United States," </b>said Deisi Caal Tiul, 18, a Guatemalan woman, who traveled with her 1-year-old child and her friend, Olga Marina Choc, 21. After being sent to Ciudad Juárez under Title 42, they went to a shelter that was created originally for trans women who were waiting to request asylum.
<b>"They told us that the border was open," Choc said of the smugglers who brought them</b> to the border. "But
<b>when we got to the border, we realized that it was closed."</b> Neither of them plans to go back to their country. They will wait to present their asylum cases.

Deisi's child does not stop crying. She gets up from her chair to show him the view of Ciudad Juárez from the window.
<b>She believes that, one day, they will be able to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.</b> Her uncles are waiting for her in the U.S.

"Guatemala is very violent.
<b>We came here to better our lives, but they've left us here,"</b> Choc said in Ciudad Juárez. She said that Biden's messaging and
<b>immigration officials' explanation were not clear enough.</b> "They lie to people. ... All that we're waiting for is for the president
<b>to keep his promise and to receive people who came all the way from Guatemala. Or is all of that a lie too?"</b> she said.

<b>"Immigration officials grabbed us, didn't tell us anything, and then sent us back.</b> They didn't tell us if we would have the chance to cross later," said Bertilz Salazar, 48, a Guatemalan woman who traveled 2,000 miles from Izabál, Guatemala to El Paso, Texas, with her daughter, 14. U.S. Customs and Border Officials expelled them at 8 p.m.
<b>"It was so upsetting, because we didn't know where to go.</b>
<b>We had to ask the taxi driver where there was a shelter," </b>she said. They ended up in the same place as Caal and Choc. "I don't want to go back to Guatemala, because the situation there is rough," she said. She explained that the banana farm in which she worked flooded during Hurricane Iota, and she and many others lost their employment. She hopes that the border will reopen and she can seek asylum.
<b>"I will wait," she said.</b>

<b>"I will wait until they open the border,"</b> said Marta Domínguez, 26, who was traveling with her daughter, 2. She said that wants to get to the home of her mother, who has lived undocumented in Florida for 17 years. "She will help me.
<b>She told me to wait until the border is opened. I'm willing to wait however long it takes. </b>I don't know when it will open, but I will wait." She said that Border Patrol officials explained to her that she would not be able to enter the U.S. because migrant crossings were prohibited due to the coronavirus.
<b>"They told us that they'd send us back, and that we would have to wait," </b>she said. The smuggler who had brought her from Guatemala had told her that the border was open.

<b>"I hope that President Biden has some compassion for us,"</b> said Santos Feliciana Maldonado, 29, a Guatemalan woman who wanted to work in the U.S. to help her father who has diabetes and her mother who has medical issues with one leg. In order to travel, she borrowed money from a neighbor, who is currently charging her interest.
<b>"We had to come," she said. "When I think about it I feel like there's no way out.</b> I need to be able to cross. I hope they open the border." She had heard rumors from other migrants that other parts of the border were open. For now, she will keep looking for employment in Ciudad Juárez. So far employers have rejected her because she does not have papers.

An armband from U.S. Customs and Border Protection used to identify migrants who are detained in the U.S. for a few hours before they are expelled to Mexico.

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"They told us that we were going to a bigger shelter because they could not process our paperwork there, since there were too many of us," said Walter Lorenzo, 35, who traveled from Guatemala with his 5-months-pregnant wife and 3-year-old daughter. They were sitting on a bench in Ciudad Juárez on April 8, 2021, minutes after the U.S. had sent them back to Mexico under Title 42. The controversial policy of sending people back to Mexico was started under Donald Trump and Joe Biden has allowed it to continue during the pandemic.

Imagen Anna Clare Spelman/Univision

Grecia Herrera, the founder of the Respetttrans shelter for trans women. The shelter opened in 2018, when a caravan of Central American migrants brought many people who were part of the trans community to the United States's southern border to request asylum.
<b>Before the pandemic, the shelter housed between 70 and 100 people. Covid-19 caused the number of residents to fall dramatically to 30. </b>

The shelter has the capacity to house 400 people on four different floors. But because of the pandemic, it could only attend to half that number. Since the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden, the shelter's population has increased.
<b>It is now operating at full capacity, with over 200 people a day.</b> The majority of them are not part of the trans community. They are migrants who have been expelled from the U.S. under Title 42. The U.S. policy of sending people back to Mexico immediately after they crossed the border surprised Mexican officials and the organization that sought to house them.

Repetttrans is one of the 18 shelters that operate in Ciudad Juárez. It is located in a poor area in the city's center.
<b>From the window, you can see the Rio Grande and the U.S.-Mexico border wall. </b>The non-profit shelter depends on individual donations, but those have dwindled during the pandemic. At moments when donations have not been enough, the shelter has asked migrants to donate money, even if they have only five pesos, to pay for food, diapers, and other items that are needed.

<b>"No shelter was prepared," Herrera said of the migrants sent to Ciudad Juárez under Title 42.</b> "We took into account that the number of migrants was going to go up, but we did not know that it was going to happen so quickly," she added.

The Good Samaritan is another shelter in Ciudad Juárez. It is located on the northeast edge of the city, in an area of dirt roads. Access is limited. Pastor Juan Fierro took over the shelter in 2017, when it was exclusively for men. But in 2018, the many migrants arriving at the border forced the shelter to change its policy. "I had to make a decision to receive both men and women," he recalled. As migrants have been expelled under Title 42 to cities along the border, including Ciudad Juárez,
<b>he has allowed families with children to stay there.</b>

Since mid-March, when the U.S. started expelling many more migrants to Ciudad Juárez under Title 42,
<b>the population at the Good Samaritan shelter has increased 200% by Fierro's estimate. </b>More migrants have been expelled to Mexico because more have tried to cross the border, in part because of misinformation about the reopening of the U.S. border and false messaging by smugglers, who have promised migrants that they will be allowed to stay in the U.S. if they have small children.

Rosa Mani is the coordinator of a hotel run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Ciudad Juárez. It serves as a filter for migrants.
<b>They are quarantined in separate rooms in order to avoid an outbreak of Covid-19 in the city's shelters. </b>The hotel has been operating since May 2020. It has been used by asylum-seekers who were returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, people who were homeless during the pandemic, and migrants who were expelled under Title 42, who make up 60% of the population. The hotel has 47 rooms, 10 of which are for people who tested positive for Covid-19. The remainder are for migrants who are waiting for shelter spaces to become available.

"With the Migrant Protection Protocols, we knew that they would tell people to wait for six months to a year, because everyone got a paper with their court date.
<b>Now, with Title 42, we don't know how long they're going to wait," </b>said Pastor Juan Fierro, whose shelter now houses primarily women and kids.

On April 5, 2021, the municipality opened a gymnasium to migrants in order to take the pressure off the network of other shelters and allow the city to provide a roof to more people. That same day,
<b>the new shelter received 43 migrants, including 14 kids and 29 adults.</b> Staff intended to test migrants for Covid-19 before allowing them in, but the testing equipment did not arrive, so they asked people to sleep with a bunk bed separating each of them.

"We decided to open a shelter because
<b>there were more people arriving and the other shelters in the city were already at full capacity,"</b> said Rogelio Pinal, the top human rights official in Ciudad Juárez. In two days, officials filled the gymnasium with 200 beds, 400 cots, and 400 blankets. They selected the space in part because of how close it is to the police station. They are uncertain when they will have to close it. Pinal said that they are evaluating which other spaces in the city could be used as shelters.

<b>"I think no officials were prepared for this," Pinal said.</b> They did not realize so many migrants would be sent back to Mexico by the U.S., so they did not take measures to prepare for the current number of people arriving. "We are used to having migrants who are heading to the U.S., but we do not know for how long we can continue to receive this quantity of people."

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Grecia Herrera, the founder of the Respetttrans shelter for trans women. The shelter opened in 2018, when a caravan of Central American migrants brought many people who were part of the trans community to the United States's southern border to request asylum. Before the pandemic, the shelter housed between 70 and 100 people. Covid-19 caused the number of residents to fall dramatically to 30.

Imagen Anna Clare Spelman/Univision

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