Dozens of Venezuelan migrants who said they had been deported this week from the United States They mobilized to the Gateway Bridge, one of the three land connections of the southern border of the North American nation with Mexico, in order to demand that the authorities allow them to re-enter their territory.
Videos broadcast by the press present at the scene made it possible to see how a group of migrants begged behind a fence installed on the bridge, on the Mexican side, to a dozen United States police officers to allow them to enter the United States.
The demonstrators demanded to speak with immigration officials of the North American country.
Several shouted that they had “proof” that they had entered the United States “before October 12.” That day, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new program that would award a humanitarian entry permit for 24,000 Venezuelansbut warned that it would return to Mexico anyone who illegally crossed its southern border.
“We entered before 12, that is illegal. We have 15 days in there. We already lost everything,” shouted the Venezuelan migrants, leaning against the metal fence.
An official unit of the United States government confirmed the closure of the bridge due to the migrant demonstration.
“The Gateway Bridge between Matamoros and Brownsville (Texas) has been closed due to a protest. US government employees have been instructed to avoid the area until further notice,” the US consulate general in Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, wrote on Twitter.
the mexican newspaper The brave He detailed that several of the protesters on the Gateway Bridge wore chains around their necks and painted their hands white. He put the number of migrants at “half a hundred” and detailed that the “majority” was from Venezuela.
“The Venezuelan community left the house of the migrant San Juan Diego and San Francisco de Asís in Matamoros, where they remain after being expelled from the United States,” said the Mexican publication in its digital version, which quoted one of the protesters.
“I have been traveling for months, I have been hungry, cold and we slept on the street. People help us and feed us,” Rodolfo Eduardo Lira, a migrant from Venezuela, told El Bravo.
The newspaper also assured that the demonstration on the land route between Matamoros and Brownsville, known in Mexico as the New International Bridge, generated “long lines of vehicles trying to transit” between the border points of both countries.
The newspaper Contactfor its part, specified that the demonstration was carried out by a group of “more than 60 Venezuelans who were deported to Mexico” the day before, on Thursday.
One day after announcement of the new migration plan for Venezuelansthe international press reported the return of “hundreds” of citizens of that nation to Mexico from the same Wednesday afternoon.
Spokespersons for the returned migrants explained in videos broadcast on social networks that they had entered before the date of revelation of the new immigration decree and said they had been expelled “under deception.”
The demonstration on the border between Mexico and the United States occurred on the same day that the international organization Doctors Without Borders condemned the expulsion of Venezuelan migrants under a public health order known as Title 42.
A statement from the organization assured that this rule would have served to expel “more than two million” people in the last three years. Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States, called on President Joe Biden to repeal that order and avoid taking “one step forward, two giant steps back.”
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