REYNOSA, Mexico — Juan Felipe Rodriguez slouched with his back against the wall of the Mexican government building at the international bridge across the Rio Grande. His 7-year-old son still slumbered under a Mylar blanket on the cement next to him.
After traveling north from Guatemala, they crossed into the United States only to soon find themselves rapidly expelled back into Mexico. They arrived at this point of misery at 1 a.m., he said, in a border city he didn’t know, save for its reputation for danger.
Like many other migrants, they were sent back across the Mexican border after dark, many after midnight, expelled into high-crime cities at a time of the day often prohibited by international pacts.
“I never imagined this would happen,” Rodriguez said. “I thought God would provide.”
Around him, other migrants from Guatemala and Honduras said they, too, were sent into Reynosa after midnight — raising questions about their safety and the responsibility of governments to protect people seeking refuge.
Migrants are being returned to Mexico after 10 p.m. at several ports of entry, including in isolated locations along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. They appear to mostly be sent back under Title 42, the Trump-era emergency order invoked a year ago when the coronavirus pandemic erupted. Under Trump and, now, the Biden administration, Title 42 has been used more than 637,000 times in what’s become the most extreme restriction ever affecting asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Lawyers and humanitarian workers call the practice an outrage and say it increases the dangers migrants face in crime-ridden Mexico, such as extortion, rape and kidnapping. Mexico remains poised to surpass 30,000 homicides this year.
U.S.-Mexico repatriation arrangements call for returns of migrants to generally happen before 10 p.m. or 8 p.m.
“Right now, they’re just like no holds barred, and expelling people whenever they want,” said Maureen Meyer, vice president of programs at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA.
In a new report criticizing Title 42 and calling for its end, the migrant advocacy groups Human Rights First, Haitian Bridge Alliance and El Otro Lado documented nearly 500 cases of attacks and kidnappings of asylum-seekers since President Joe Biden took office in January. In one highlighted case, the Human Rights First report, titled Failure to Protect, said 100 people were taken across the border at 1 a.m. in Nogales, Arizona.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency carrying out Title 42 expulsions, said it tries to send expelled migrants back across the border by 10 p.m. each day.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection endeavors to repatriate all migrants to Mexico per the U.S. repatriation agreement with the government of Mexico each day prior to 10 p.m.,” Thomas Gresback, a CBP spokesman, said in a statement. “Implementation of Title 42, the time of day a migrant was apprehended, processing capacity and coordination of the return of a migrant with the government of Mexico are all issues which can impact repatriation times.”
“The border is not open, and the vast majority of people are being returned under Title 42.”
The Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry didn’t respond to inquiries about migrant safety, including questions addressing U.S.-Mexico agreements dating back to 2004 for the “safe, orderly, dignified and humane repatriation” of Mexican migrants.
Nine pacts
Nine repatriation pacts dating back to 2016 generally limit transfers of detained migrants back into Mexico from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. at bridges between McAllen and Reynosa and Brownsville and Matamoros.
In El Paso, and Nogales, Arizona, transfers are to be scheduled between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. In Laredo, they are scheduled for 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. In San Diego, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The pacts cover the return of Mexicans. Mexicans make up about 60% of the Title 42 expulsions, while Central Americans from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador make up nearly a third.
Meyer of WOLA noted Mexico’s Foreign Ministry, at the start of the pandemic on March 19, 2020, initially said it would extend hours to assist those arriving back from the U.S.
In Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, women especially have become prey of criminals who kidnap and rape. Juárez has reported 90 victims of homicides as of March 25.
“It is incredibly dangerous and I have definitely spoken to multiple mothers who begged not to be returned and to wait until the light of the day,” said Taylor Levy, an immigration attorney who has worked in Juárez, El Paso and other points along the border. “I would get there at 4 a.m. and people had been returned at midnight and 3 a.m.”
Levy said just last December a Salvadoran woman and another migrant woman were kidnapped shortly after midnight. The pair were raped for three days before they escaped, she said.
Near midnight earlier this month on the Santa Fe International Bridge between El Paso and Juárez, a large group of migrant men could be seen escorted to the crossing by CBP agents. The migrants were sent into the darkened streets of Juárez Avenue, where businesses were closed.
On another day, Nubia Bustillos, a 28-year-old woman from Honduras, recalled being expelled from the U.S. via the international bridge. Bustillos was unsure what time it was when she was sent across, but said the streets of Juárez were dark and businesses shuttered.
She had originally crossed into the U.S. almost 700 miles away, in the Rio Grande Valley. Immigration agents put her on a plane to El Paso.
“I’ve never been to Juárez,” she said, looking lost on one of the city’s main boulevards. “But I have always heard bad things, about cartels, women being raped, killed. I couldn’t sleep, afraid of being raped, or killed.”
She cuddled her toddler, Boris, who coughed. She said she was vencida, done. “I just want to go home. My husband paid the smuggler, but I just want to go home. Everyone lies. The smuggler. The U.S. government.”
As she teared up, Bustillos buried her face in her son’s forehead.
In Juárez, Rosalio Sosa, who runs a network of shelters in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua, said nighttime expulsions are calculated and planned. “These people are deliberately put in harm’s way,” Sosa said. “It’s a way to disorient and scare them from attempting to cross again.”
Sosa added that the situation in Palomas, about an hour to the west, was even worse — and migrants had been expelled there.
“If the town is dangerous in the daytime, imagine midnight? We’ve had women who have been raped, men kidnapped, extorted or robbed, if not by police, certainly by organized crime,” she said.
In Nogales, along the border between Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora, the higher number of expulsions in January, February and March have meant a higher volume of abuse, migrant advocates say.
Migrants have reportedly been dumped into Nogales, Mexico, across from Nogales, Arizona, at 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., said Sara Ritchie, communications director of the nonprofit Kino Border Initiative.
“They are being dumped right into downtown at one of the most dangerous places where it is incredibly easy for organized groups to prey on migrants once they are there,” Ritchie said.
Border wall?
So many have been returned to Mexico under Title 42 that it’s now called an effective border wall. The Title 42 returns by the Border Patrol are considered “expulsions” rather than deportations. Deportations involve a more lengthy process where asylum claims and other grounds to remain in the U.S. are considered.
The ACLU and others are suing the U.S. government on behalf of unaccompanied minors, arguing that children should not be returned to Mexico and deserve U.S. protections when feeling they are in danger. The U.S. argued that Title 42 allowed it to set aside U.S. immigration laws.
The ACLU won a first round in court asserting that the pandemic couldn’t be used as a reason to expel unaccompanied minors. A federal appeals court allowed the ruling to temporarily go into effect in late January. Shortly after, the Biden administration decided to stop the use of Title 42 against children entering the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian.
“They [the expelled migrants] literally have no rights now,” said lawyer Sue Kenney-Pflazer, the director of border and asylum network the nonprofit Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS. “They are in limbo under Title 42.”
On Monday, a group of about 100 U.S. and Mexican academics called for the end of Title 42. Some singled out late-night expulsions, especially into dangerous cities, or small rural towns like Palomas. Others questioned what they called faulty public health reasoning for the use of Title 42, noting that Mexico and the U.S. are both struggling with the coronavirus pandemic and cross-border traffic is only partially halted.
They noted the irony in the way federal authorities are flying dozens of newly arrived migrants daily from the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso just to be expelled back into Mexico. That would seem to actually spread COVID-19 if anyone were ill, the academics said.
“The expulsions after midnight, especially in small border towns that don’t have the capacity to attend to people is of great concern,” said Maria Dolores Paris-Pombo, a researcher at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana, Mexico. “We’re talking about some of the most vulnerable families being dumped in small towns without services, without support or shelters.”
On Monday, frustrated migrants in Reynosa who are camped in a city park staged a protest on the pedestrian walkway of the international bridge. The Border Patrol said the bridge was shut down for vehicle and pedestrian traffic for 20 minutes. One placard pleaded: “Que Dios toque el corazón de Presidente Joe Biden. Ayúdenos!” May God touch the heart of President Joe Biden. Help us!
For more than a year, the U.S. State Department has warned travelers not to travel to Tamaulipas, the state wherein Reynosa lies, because of the danger. It is the only Mexican state along the border that carries the highest warning level due to violence there.
Dina Gomez left her home when hurricanes swept away her home in Guatemala and the COVID-19 pandemic hammered the economy of her country of nearly 17 million. She said she wants asylum in the U.S., but when she crossed the border, she was quickly returned with her son.
It was 1 a.m. when she arrived at the bridge into Reynosa, south of the Rio Grande.
Gomez spent the night with other Guatemalans huddled against the gray wall of a Mexican government building, afraid to venture further into the city they didn’t know. “Please help us,” she pleaded. “Give us a hand.”
