Biden can’t get a grip on ‘little Venezuela’ on the US border

Around midnight, ‘gate 42’ in the border wall at El Paso opens briefly. A group of migrants who had been waiting on the Mexican side calmly cross the bridge into America – and straight to the bus the border police have set up. “They enter the asylum process,” explains an observer from a human rights organization. Two drones circle in the air, sand and dust swirl around the fence. Matrix signs hang above the adjacent ring road 375 with the warning: ‘Watch out for pedestrians crossing unexpectedly’.

It’s almost too quiet, had pastor Rosemary of the Lutheran Church Cristo Rey (Christ the King) during the day. Last week there were still hundreds of wandering migrants, just crossing the border into Mexico and uncertain about the continuation of their journey. On this Thursday of all occasions, it was incredibly quiet in El Paso, Texas, and a befriended priest met no more than fifteen Venezuelans.

Rosemary thought it was a crazy week. Suddenly, police officers began handing out fines to aid workers who, as usual, had provided food and drink to migrants at the Sagrado Corazón (Sacred Heart) church right on the border. Rosemary had placed her water bottles and snack bags inside the church as a precaution. At night, Border Patrol and patrol cars drove or parked all along the border wall—the wall Donald Trump wanted and still stands under Joe Biden.

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El Paso, Texas and the United States are bracing for the storm this week, although it is not yet clear what it will look like. On Thursday, the US government lifted all emergency measures taken to combat the effects of the corona pandemic. One of those measures lifted at midnight was ‘Title 42’, which has allowed the United States to bar all migrants at the border since 2020 by appealing to public health. That Title 42 has not been insignificant is evident from the fact that the border police exercised this power more than 2.8 million times used to send people back to Mexico. Out of a total of nearly 7 million ‘encounters’ with undocumented migrants.

At gate 42, thirteen kilometers as the crow flies from the main border post, the Paso Norte, two vloggers are filming at night, caps backwards on their heads, swearing. “Look there!” He aims his camera at a stick over the fence, toward Mexico. “All those buses with blue lights! They transport migrants to the border posts.” A nightly bus convoy does indeed drive on the Four Centuries Boulevard in Ciudad Juárez. “Nobody wants to say what’s going on here. Dude! This is about my safety, about my country.”

Gate 42 will be locked again around one o’clock. On the Mexican side, ten or fifteen shadows, sharply outlined against the floodlight, walk away empty-handed.

The most miserable place of the trip

On Thursday in El Paso you could write down all kinds of scenarios about what would happen from Friday. “Tomorrow, 10,000 to 15,000 migrants are suddenly expected here,” said Domingo García, lawyer and president of the League of United Latin American Citizens human rights organization. Had he heard from a district administrator. “Maybe 1,000 people cross the road on a normal day.” City councilor Isabel Salcido had come to where most of the cameras were, to say that the city has “put everything in its place” to deal with an emergency – but that it would be nice if the federal government could lend a hand. wanted to help.

“You hear different stories all the time,” says Pastor Rosemary in the ‘room of the good shepherd’ in Cristo Rey. “For example, that the Biden administration wants to return to the Remain in Mexicopolicies of President Trump.” That was an agreement with Mexico, in which the neighboring country was willing to receive undocumented migrants deported by the US. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives passed a law on Thursday that includes Remain in Mexico, the continued construction of the wall and the return of unaccompanied minor asylum seekers to Mexico. “I have received a lot of people here,” says Rosemary. “Some had crossed eight countries to get to the US. Without exception they said that Mexico was the most miserable place of the entire trip.”

We are squeezing their economy and are surprised that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are knocking on their door

Dominco Garcia Human rights lawyer

It could very well be that the great crossing has already taken place in recent weeks, of migrants who did not want to wait for the day when the system would change again. “It will be a bit chaotic,” President Biden had predicted. For the Democratic president, the march on the border is a political setback. He maintains that he proposed a new migration law “on day one” of his presidency, but that Republicans are blocking it. The fact is that Biden has been able to pass all kinds of laws, but he has not made any progress in any area of ​​migration policy. His vice president would fight the “underlying causes” of migration – read: poverty in Latin America. Kamala Harris made one trip to that region and then she remained invisible and inaudible on this terrain.

The Republicans are benefiting from it. Migration is a theme that is very much alive to their supporters and also to the independent voters who are often the deciding factor in elections. The unpopular Biden becomes according to recent polls on no point so distrusted as on this theme. His Homeland Security Secretary is trying to give the impression that the problem is the rapid increase in migration – the border police ‘encountered’ nearly 2.4 million undocumented migrants in 2022; in 2019 there were 850,000 – although large and complex, the government is getting a grip on the matter.

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Now that Title 42 is over, illegally crossing migrants will be deported under Title 8. This measure is stricter than the corona emergency law. Those who were previously arrested without papers were put across the border, but could try again the next day. Title 8 dictates that anyone caught without papers will forfeit the right to seek asylum in the US for five years. Whether that matters much to the tens of thousands of migrants who have gathered in Ciudad Juárez alone is open to question. Would they be able to form a good picture of the rapidly changing conditions at the border?

They are constantly getting misleading information from people smugglers, says Rosemary. “I heard that the priest of the Catholic Sacred Heart Church could provide valid papers. And the migrants would have received that information from me.” She says that the police have become stricter and that thirty people with forged papers have been arrested this week.

All over downtown El Paso, people are walking around with an ocher yellow mail envelope. It contains the papers they receive after their first interview at the immigration service. If they have those papers, they can legally travel through the US until their asylum application is processed. And that can take years. “Recently, the people smugglers sell counterfeit papers in the same color envelope for 40 dollars. The migrant who is apprehended with this will be deported and will not be allowed to enter the country for the time being.”

Morning rituals

On Friday, El Paso wakes up with its usual morning rituals. At the foot of the Paso del Norte, cars and people gather at dusk waiting for migrant workers. Mopeds come riding over the bridge, with the sharp roar of the two-stroke engine and a smoke of mixed lubrication. Footage from surveillance cameras covering the local transmitter 48 Telemundo forwards, show a normally busy day at the border crossings.

There are two rows in front of the Sacred Heart Church. One is from citizens of El Paso and comes for the food distribution that starts at nine o’clock, after mass. The other row crawls out from under white Red Cross blankets, shakes a bag of colorful cornflakes into a bowl and brushes their teeth at a makeshift water point. These are the migrants who crossed the border last night.

“Little Venezuela,” the taxi drivers call the sidewalks around the church. Venezuelans are by far the largest group among current migrants. Human rights lawyer Domingo García had pointed to the US government’s sanctions against President Maduro’s dictatorial left-wing regime. “We are squeezing their economy and are surprised that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are knocking on our door.”

One of them is gathering his things with his friends. What does he want? “Further!” Where to? “To Miami!”

A version of this article also appeared in the May 13, 2023 newspaper.