Jose Maria Garcia Lara got a call asking if his shelter had room for a dozen Venezuelan migrants who were among the first expelled to Mexico under an expanded US policy that denies rights to seek asylum.
“We can’t take anyone, no one will fit,” he answered, standing amid rows of tents in what looks like a small warehouse. He had 260 migrants on the floor, about 80 over capacity and the most since opening the shelter in 2012.
The phone call on Thursday illustrates how the Biden administration’s expansion of asylum restrictions to Venezuelans poses a potentially enormous challenge to already overstretched Mexican shelters.
Photo: AFP
The US agreed to let up to 24,000 Venezuelans apply online to fly directly to the US for temporary stays, but said it would also start returning to Mexico any who cross illegally — a number that topped 25,000 in August alone.
The US has since Wednesday expelled Venezuelans to Tijuana and four other Mexican border cities, said Jeremy MacGillivray, deputy director of the UN International Organization for Migration in Mexico.
The others are Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Piedras Negras and Matamoros.
Casa del Migrante in Matamoros admitted at least 120 Venezuelans from Brownsville on Thursday, said the Reverend Francisco Gallardo, the shelter director.
On Friday, the Mexican government was offering free bus rides to Mexico City.
Venezuelans have suddenly become the second-largest nationality at the US border after Mexicans, a tough challenge for US President Joe Biden.
Nearly four out of five who were stopped by US authorities in August entered in or near Eagle Pass, Texas, across from Piedras Negras, a Mexican city of about 150,000 people with scarce shelter space.
“We are on the verge of collapse,” said Edgar Rodriguez Izquierdo, a lawyer at Casa del Migrante in Piedras Negras, which feeds 500 people daily and is converting a school to a shelter for 150 people.
Tijuana, where Garcia Lara runs the Juventud 2000 shelter, is the largest city on Mexico’s border and likely has the most space.
The city says its 26 shelters, which are running near or at capacity, can accommodate about 4,500 migrants combined.
Tijuana’s largest shelter, Embajadores de Jesus, is hosting 1,400 migrants on bunk beds and floor mats, while a group affiliated with the University of California, San Diego, is building a towering annex for thousands more.
Gustavo Banda, like other shelter directors in Tijuana, does not know what to expect from the US shift on Venezuela, reflecting an air of uncertainty along the Mexican border.
“Nobody really knows what’s going to happen until they start sending people back,” Banda said on Thursday as families with young children prepared for sleep.
The Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said it would temporarily admit “some” Venezuelans who are expelled from the US under a public health order known as Title 42, without giving a numerical cap.
The US has expelled migrants more than 2.3 million times since Title 42 took effect in March 2020, denying them a chance at asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
A Mexican official said Mexico’s capacity to take back Venezuelans hinges on shelter space and success of the US offer of temporary stays for up to 24,000 Venezuelans.
The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke condition of anonymity.
Until now, Mexico has only accepted returns from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, in addition to Mexico. As a result, Mexican shelters have been filled with migrants from those countries, along with Haitians.
Venezuelans, like those of other nationalities including Cuba and Nicaragua, have generally been released in the US to pursue immigration cases. Strained diplomatic relations have made it nearly impossible for the Biden administration to return them to Venezuela.
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