The American dream of Venezuelans collides in Central America

Leaving your country behind and crossing half a continent is in itself a journey full of unknowns. But that uncertainty has thickened further in the last two weeks, with 180-degree changes in US immigration policy.

On October 12, the government of Joe Biden announced a new measure that concerns Venezuelans: whoever enters irregularly through the land border with Mexico or who has arrived in Panama in the same circumstance will be immediately expelled to Mexican territory, without the opportunity to apply for asylum.

It is an expansion of Title 42, which allows the United States to prevent migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and now Venezuela, from seeking asylum at the border. That measure dates from the Trump Administration and was based on the need to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. “But it has already become more than clear that it has nothing to do with public health,” denounces Tyler Mattiace, a researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in dialogue with France 24.

The Joe Biden government had tried to suspend this practice in March of this year and a judge denied it. But now, in a contradictory twist, he has decided to expand it. His own Department of Justice continues to fight in court to abolish Title 42. “It’s absurd, one of his hands is fighting to supposedly abolish it and the other is expanding it,” adds Mattiace.

Dismantling the American asylum system

The announcement came a few weeks before the November 8 legislative elections in the United States, but also at a time when migration trends have radically changed. In recent months, the number of Venezuelans who came to the US seeking protection exceeded that of migrants from Central America.

“As soon as the number of immigrants at the border of a certain nationality increases, this government intends to apply a specific policy for that nationality,” says the researcher who covers Mexico and Guatemala in the Americas division of HRW. “This is how the asylum system and basic principles of international humanitarian law are being dismantled,” he criticizes.

“And it has been dramatic: 5,000 expulsions of Venezuelans have been registered since a little more than a week of implementation of that expansion of Title 42,” completes Maureen Meyer, vice president of Programs for the Washington Office for Latin American Affairs (WOLA) in statements to France 24. “It is worrying because it keeps the border closed to many people in need of protection.”

A simultaneous announcement that was received with “satisfaction” by various human rights organizations, including WOLA, is the “humanitarian parole” program, which gives legal status for two years to 24,000 Venezuelans who arrive by plane and have a sponsor, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since the Russian invasion in February.

“It is a small step to provide shelter through legal channels. However, that number is a minimum compared to the needs,” says Maureen Meyer. Indeed, for September alone, the US authorities themselves have already registered 33,000 people from Venezuela at the border.

Another problem is that the requirements to obtain this permit are quite exclusive. “The mere fact of having a valid passport is complicated for a majority of Venezuelans,” emphasizes Tyler Mattiace, referring to the slow and expensive procedures in the South American country.

The bewilderment of those who were already on the way

The first impact these announcements have had was to generate a lot of “uncertainty” among Venezuelan migrants: “Several were leaving the Darién Gap when the announcement was made,” Sibylla Brodzinsky, regional spokesperson for the UN Agency for Migration, told France 24. Refugees (UNHCR) in America, referring to the dangerous jungle that separates Panama from Colombia.

So quickly, the priority of that United Nations body was to alert people who had the objective of reaching the United States: “The first thing was to make sure that they make informed decisions about whether or not to continue their journey.”

Indeed, the migratory journey through Central America is surrounded by misinformation and rumors that make it difficult for migrant families to make decisions. To this must be added the torment of backing out of a life choice such as leaving one’s homeland, even more so when all one’s savings have been invested in it.

“This sudden change in policy has really left them perplexed and emotionally drained. Some or almost most of them don’t know what to do, if they should keep going up the route north or stay where they are or even go back to Venezuela,” Rodd said. Gerstenhaber, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Mexico and Central America.

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This new plan not only affects Venezuelan migrants, but also transit countries. “There is already an increase in Venezuelan people either asking for asylum application processes, or applying to them in the countries where they are: Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico,” explains Sibylla Brodzinsky.

And in Central America, the pressure that this reality can put on migration institutions does not have the same impact according to the experience of the countries: “Mexico has a robust asylum system, congested yes, but it has the capacity to receive. The capacities of Guatemala are much smaller, although (they are) growing,” reports the UNHCR spokeswoman.

Further north, Panama and Costa Rica do not have the resources and infrastructure to deal with the current waves of migration. This is illustrated by the statements made on September 26 by the Costa Rican Foreign Minister, Arnoldo André Tinoco, who stressed that migration from countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela was “exhausting the systems.”

On the migratory route, there is no refuge that is not overflowing

On the Mexican side, where the shelters for migrants on the two borders were already overflowing since before the announcement, the probable avalanche of expelled Venezuelans is worrying.

“It is a procedure that takes time, we are going to support those who are in our territory, as we always do, with shelters, with food, with medical care,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday, March 21. october.

“But for several Central American governments, that announcement came as a complete surprise and they don’t know how to respond,” says HRW’s Tyler Mattiace. “Mexico’s response that we are showing is putting these people on buses and taking them to cities that are not even prepared to receive them. That is when they are not illegally expelled at the border with Guatemala.” WOLA’s Maureen Meyer confirms: “Mexico hasn’t been clear about what’s next for them.”

Instead of a clarification, what migrants currently receive from Mexican immigration authorities is a letter ordering them to return to Guatemala within 15 days. “But those people have nothing. They walk around in flip flops and without money because everything was taken from them at the border with the United States,” investigator Tyler Mattiace is outraged.

This year, complaints were made public alleging that US border agents did not return the belongings of detained migrants, including medicine, money and evidence for their asylum applications. These denounced practices, in the context of the extension of Title 42 to Venezuelans, leave a growing number of vulnerable people, wandering in a Mexico that requires them to leave the territory in two weeks.

“That attitude of the Government of Mexico of saying ‘we know that these people do not want to stay here, so it is not our responsibility to give them a way to stay,’ is disappointing,” says Tyler Mattiace.

The military response on stage

Guatemala has also been involved in the tumultuous management of an endless migration problem that changes course according to the decisions of the United States. According to the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, the passage of Venezuelans through the country has increased 92% in the last month: from October 1 to 12, 1,906 were located and rejected, compared to 998 in the same period in September.

One of the responses of the Central American country was a deployment of military personnel: “More than 1,100 soldiers from the Guatemalan Army were assigned and not only at the borders. We are talking about 11 checkpoints that were placed near the main customs and entering the national territory to Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, as well as in the interior of the country, on the main migratory routes that interconnect these borders,” says the spokesman for the Guatemalan Army, Colonel Rubén Tellez.

Faced with these doors that close one after another, the only way out left for several migrants with their American dream crushed is to return to Venezuela. Several transit countries chose to provide assistance to those who would make that decision, assigning them flights.

This is the case of Panama, where 900 Venezuelan migrants who were in a shelter have voluntarily returned to their country in recent days on “humanitarian flights.” But even once that decision is made, the road remains bumpy, as Tyler Mattiace tells it: “In order to get a ticket, they have to contact the embassies of a country they’ve fled from and where accusations of treason are commonplace. common”.

One of the failures of the expansion of Title 42 was not thinking about what happens to the thousands of people who are already on the way to the United States.

In addition, these voluntary return trips must be paid for by the travelers themselves. According to testimonies collected by the EFE agency, they cost between 180 and 280 dollars. It is a question “of market supply-demand, we cannot tell a business or company what to charge,” said the director of the Panamanian Immigration office, Samira Gozaine.

A money that, once again, is needed by those people who have left Venezuela precisely because of an endless economic crisis. “One of the failures of the expansion of Title 42 was not thinking about what happens to the thousands of people who are already on the road to the United States,” concludes Maureen Meyer.

And in fact, two weeks after this change in immigration policy, few know: will they be stranded in countries where they had not planned to stay? Will they return to a Venezuela from which they risked everything to flee? Or will they continue trying to reach the United States undetected, with all the dangers this poses to their lives?

With EFE, Reuters and local media