About two dozen makeshift tents were set ablaze and destroyed at a migrant camp across the border from Texas this week, witnesses said on Friday, a sign of the extreme risk that comes with being stuck in Mexico as Washington increasingly relies on that country to host people fleeing poverty and violence.
The fires were set on Wednesday and Thursday at the sprawling camp of about 2,000 people, most of them from Venezuela, Haiti and Mexico, in Matamoros, a city near Brownsville, Texas.
An advocate for migrants said they had been doused with gasoline.
Photo: AP
“The people fled as their tents were burned,” said Gladys Canas, who runs the group Ayudandoles A Triunfar. “What they’re saying as part of their testimony is that they were told to leave from there.”
There were no reports of deaths or significant injuries, but about 25 rudimentary shelters made up of plastic, tarps, branches and other materials were torched in a sparsely populated part of the camp.
Many who lived there also apparently lost clothing, documents and whatever other modest belongings may have been left inside.
Margarita, a Mexican woman staying at the camp, on Friday said she saw migrants from Venezuela screaming during the previous day’s blaze.
“They had their children with them and a few other things they had a chance to get,” Margarita said.
She spoke on the condition that her last name not be published due to fears for her safety.
Gangs have threatened migrants who were wading across the river border illegally, as well as their guides, Margarita said, but the crossings had continued.
Criminal groups often prey upon migrants in the area and demand money in return for permission to pass through their territory.
Juan Jose Rodriguez, director of the Tamaulipas Institute for Migrants, a state agency coordinating with Mexico’s federal government, said he had no information that a gang was responsible for the fires.
Rodriguez attributed the blazes to a group of migrants and said some 10 tents that had already been abandoned were burned, adding that they apparently set the fires to express frustration with a US government mobile app that assigns turns for people to show up at the border and claim asylum.
Migrants have been applying for 740 slots made available daily on the glitch-plagued app, CBPOne, which allows them to enter the US legally at an official crossing.
There are far more migrants than available slots, exacerbating tensions in Mexican border cities that house them, often in shelters and camps like the one in Matamoros.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS