(toskanews) – Margelis Tinoco cries: her appointment for asylum in the United States has just been cancelled. «See, he says, showing the phone, what they wrote to me». Just as this Colombian lady was despairing from Ciudad Juarez, on the border between Mexico and Texas, in Washington Donald Trump was promising in his inauguration speech as president of the United States, among other things, to expel “millions and millions of criminal immigrants” and to close the southern border with Mexico by proclaiming a national emergency.
Trump put the CBP One app out of action, which allowed migrants at the border to have an appointment to legally enter the United States to request asylum or for work reasons. In Tjuana, on the border but still on Mexican territory, dozens more people are waiting for news about their visa appointments.
Thousands of people arrive from Mexico from countries in crisis: primarily Venezuela but not only. For example, within the Colombian borders there are already at least eleven thousand displaced people, fleeing the guerrilla violence in the Catatumbo region: kidnappings, attacks against the fighters but also their families and anyone in the line of fire.
“Eleven thousand people in just four days according to the data collected by our office, and there could be many more” says Irin Marin Ortiz of the office of the Ombudsman for People’s Rights. In front of the US embassy in Mexico City, some protesters beat and set fire to the effigy of the US president. The slogan on their signs says enough deportations. Trump doesn’t know human rights.
At the border, Margelis Tinoco doesn’t know what will become of her now. She left Venezuela six months ago, where she lived with her husband and 13-year-old son, chasing hope. “May Trump have mercy, may he let us cross the border, may he support us, because we have suffered a lot, it’s been six months of suffering.”
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED