Border authorities struggle to attend to the growing number of Venezuelans that the Biden Administration expels daily from the United States to Mexico under the new immigration regulations recently approved.
On Tuesday night, some 200 Venezuelans rioted at the Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) station in Tijuana, a place clearly insufficient to intern so many foreigners while they decide what to do with them.
Relatives of the Venezuelans who are interned have arrived at this immigration station and allege that the authorities have denied them information, as he told the voice of america Yosvelsy Castañeda, a Venezuelan living in Tijuana. “He has an infection in his lungs, he has a respiratory infection and so far I haven’t heard from him,” she said about one of those held there.
Previously, activists burned piñatas with the faces of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrad.
Police and soldiers cordoned off the place for hours. The next day, they let out migrants from other countries.
A week after said agreement, the problems south of the border are increasing. “We are in uncertainty waiting for news to see, at least, to be able to transit if many want to return,” he told the VOA Erick, a Venezuelan expelled to Mexico.
Both Erik and Alberto González crossed through Texas, but were sent to San Diego, California, and returned through Tijuana.
“We sold what little we had, we spent money to be able to cross, arrive and they return us like this. It is very hard”, laments Alberto.
The Mexican government granted new permits to stay longer in the country to some Venezuelans who were sent to the capital.
“A migration crisis could result in our border areas,” said José María García Lara, of the Tijuana Migrant Alliance.
Last week hundreds of Venezuelans began to arrive expeditiously through five points on the border —Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras and Matamoros—, as confirmed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations migration agency. .
The Venezuelan has suddenly become the second largest nationality to arrive at the border with the United States, behind the Mexican.
This poses a tough challenge for the Biden administration, which has no diplomatic relationship with Caracas, making deportations nearly impossible. For this reason, the government generally chose to release them so that they could continue their immigration process in US territory.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has estimated that almost 7 million people of Venezuelan origin have fled the country in the last five years, when that Latin American nation entered the current humanitarian crisis.
[Con información de AP]
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