Thousands of migrants wait in shelters and makeshift camps in three cities in Mexico for Title 42 to be lifted

() — There are approximately 22,000 migrants sleeping in shelters, on the streets and in makeshift camps in three cities in northern Mexico, city officials and migrant advocates told on Monday.

That number is expected to rise as Title 42, a pandemic-era law that allows US border agents to immediately turn away immigrants who cross the southern border illegally, in the name of preventing covid-19 , remains in legal limbo. Meanwhile, thousands of migrants heading to border cities are deciding to wait out the Trump-era pandemic policy or cross into the United States illegally.

There are approximately 9,000 migrants living in shelters, houses and in other areas of Tijuana, Mexico, near San Diego, California, according to Enrique Lucero, Tijuana’s director of immigration affairs. Approximately 60% of the migrants in Tijuana are Mexicans displaced from the states of Michoacán, Guerrero, Veracruz and Oaxaca. Meanwhile, the remaining 40% are from Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela, according to Lucero.

About 8,000 migrants are in Reynosa, Mexico, according to Pastor Hector Silva, who runs prominent shelters in the area, and about 5,000 migrants are staying in Matamoros, Glady Edith Cañas, who runs Ayudandoles a Triunfar, a nonprofit organization, told . profit in that city. Reynosa and Matamoros are located across the border from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.

Most of the migrants in Matamoros are from Venezuela, but there are also migrants from Colombia, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador and other parts of Mexico, Cañas said, adding that the number of migrants in that city increased from about 2,000 to about 5,000 over the past week.

Last week, a team in Brownsville, Texas, captured drone footage of migrants crossing the Rio Grande from Matamoros to Brownsville in inflatable rafts as a large federal and state law enforcement presence watched from US shores. from the river.

In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico — where last Tuesday filmed the Texas National Guard building a barbed wire border fence near El Paso to deter migrants from crossing into the US and footage of long lines of migrants freezing as they endured freezing temperatures made headlines across the country—it’s unclear how many migrants are currently waiting at the area’s 23 shelters and a camp near the Rio Grande, according to Santiago Gonzàlez Reyes, head of the Human Rights division. from the city.

“It is difficult to have a concrete figure given that we are a transit city; many migrants arrive by air, land, cars, and buses. We wouldn’t know exactly how many migrants are in Juárez right now,” González Reyes tells .

Asylum seekers line up to be processed by US Customs and Border Patrol agents at a gap in the US-Mexico border fence in anticipation of the lifting of Title 42, a security-era policy the pandemic used to bar migrants from entering the US (Photo by Rebecca NOBLE/AFP) (Photo by REBECCA NOBLE/AFP via Getty Images)

The National Guard builds a fence to prevent the passage of migrants

The Texas National Guard has installed more than two miles of fencing since the first mere border fences went up in the El Paso area last week. More fencing is expected to be installed, a spokesperson for the Texas National Guard told on Monday.

A group of migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, who are waiting there for Title 42 to be lifted, told they watched the fence continue to go up for the past three days.

From the Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, side of the border, guardsmen and Humvees can be seen, as well as dozens of migrants lining up to turn themselves in to border authorities.