Migrants flee more countries, regardless of US policies

ELLIOT SPAGAT Associated Press
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TIJUANA, Mexico — In 2014, groups of unaccompanied children escaping violence in Central America overwhelmed U.S. border authorities in South Texas. In 2016, thousands of Haitians fled a devastating earthquake and stopped in Tijuana, Mexico, after walking and taking buses through up to 11 countries to the U.S. border.

In 2018, about 6,000 mostly Guatemalan and Honduran migrants fleeing violence and poverty descended on Tijuana, many of them families with young children sleeping in frigid, rain-soaked parks and streets.

The last eight years show how an extraordinary convergence of inequality, civil strife and natural disasters prompted millions to leave Latin America, Europe and Africa. Since 2017, the United States has been the world’s top destination for asylum-seekers, according to the United Nations.

<p>Texas National Guard members line up their armored vehicles Wednesday on the northern bank of the Rio Grande to prevent migrants from approaching the border fence to attempt to enter El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.</p>

Andres Leighton, Associated Press

Texas National Guard members line up their armored vehicles Wednesday on the northern bank of the Rio Grande to prevent migrants from approaching the border fence to attempt to enter El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

A Trump-era ban on asylum, granted a brief extension by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday, was one of the U.S. policies affecting migrants’ decisions to leave their homes. 

Migrants have been denied the right to seek asylum under U.S. and international law 2.5 million times since March 2020 on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19, an authority known as Title 42. It applies to all nationalities but has fallen disproportionately on people from countries that Mexico takes back, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently, Venezuela, as well as Mexico. Pent-up demand is expected to drive crossings higher when asylum restrictions end.

When the pandemic hit, people with nationalities rarely seen at the border grew month after month: Cuban, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Ecuadorean, Colombian.

Cubans are fleeing their homes in the largest numbers in six decades to escape economic and political turmoil. Most fly to Nicaragua as tourists and slowly make their way to the U.S. They were the second-largest nationality at the border after Mexicans in October.

<p>Migrants walk towards the US-Mexico border Dec. 14 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.</p>

Christian Chavez, Associated Press

Migrants walk towards the US-Mexico border Dec. 14 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Grissell Matos Prieguez and her husband surrendered to border agents near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Oct. 30 after a 16-day journey through six countries that included buses, motorcycles and taxis and exhausting night walks through bushes and foul-smelling rivers.

“Throughout all the journey you feel like you are going to die, you don’t trust anybody, nothing,” said Matos, a 34-year-old engineer. “You live in a constant fear, or to be detained and that anything would happen.”

To pay for the trip from Santiago de Cuba, they sold everything, down to computers and bicycles, and borrowed from relatives in Florida. Their parents and grandparents stayed behind.

A recent surge that has made El Paso, Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings is made up largely of Nicaraguans, whose government has quashed dissent.

Haitians who stop in South America, sometimes for years, have been a major presence, most notably when nearly 16,000 camped in the small town of Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021. The Biden administration flew many home but slowed returns amid increasingly brazen attacks by gangs that have grown more powerful since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last year.

<p>A Haitian migrant cleans his son's eyes as they wait Wednesday along the U.S. Mexico border to register with a religious organization in Reynosa, Mexico.</p>

Fernando Llano, Associated Press

A Haitian migrant cleans his son's eyes as they wait Wednesday along the U.S. Mexico border to register with a religious organization in Reynosa, Mexico.

Migration is often driven by “pull factors” that draw people to a country, such as a relatively strong U.S. economy and an asylum system that takes years to decide a case, encouraging some to come even if they feel unlikely to win. But conditions at home, or “push factors,” may be as responsible for unprecedented numbers over the last year.

Looking back, Tijuana attorney and migrant advocate Soraya Vazquez says the Haitian diaspora of 2016 was a turning point.

“We began to realize that there were massive movements all over, in some places from war, in others from political situations, violence, climate change,” said Vazquez, a San Diego native and former legislative aide in Mexico City. “Many things happened at once but, in the end, men and our governments are responsible.”

After hosting legal workshops for Haitians in Tijuana, Vazquez helped bring chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen to the city’s migrant shelters for four years. Seeking financial stability, she became Tijuana director of Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit group that reported $4.1 million in revenue in 2020 and recently was named a beneficiary of MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropy.

“What provoked all of this? Inequality,” Vazquez said over tea in Tijuana’s trendy Cacho neighborhood.

<p>Mexican migrant Carmen Aros and four of her five daughters wait for news Sunday before attempting to cross the border into the U.S. while staying at a church-run shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.</p>

Andres Leighton, Associated Press

Mexican migrant Carmen Aros and four of her five daughters wait for news Sunday before attempting to cross the border into the U.S. while staying at a church-run shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

For decades, Mexicans, largely adult men, went to the U.S. to fill jobs and send home money. But in 2015, the Pew Research Center found more Mexicans returned to Mexico from the U.S. than came since the Great Recession ended.

Mexicans still made up one of three encounters with U.S. border agents during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, higher than three years ago but well below the 85% reported in 2011 and the 95% at the turn of the century. And those fleeing are increasingly families with young children trying to escape drug-fueled violence.

Peruvians were stopped more than 9,000 times by U.S. authorities along the Mexican border in October, roughly nine times the same period a year earlier and up from only 12 times the year before.

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