Photo Courtesy of Jan Sochor / Getty Images
By Alfonso Julián Camacho and Dira Wong
Carla Sofia’s dream died a public death on January 20 at 9 a.m.
A refugee from South America, she had a late morning appointment to make her case for political asylum.
Minutes after Donald Trump was sworn in on a frigid mid-morning in Washington D.C., a bitter wind stabbed the borderlands. Carla Sofia’s meeting was cancelled – probably forever. Trump’s first of a flurry of executive orders froze all asylum applications.
Carla Sofia (a pseudonym) escaped violence in her home country, only to find more in Mexico. A nation that was once decent to refugees has turned hostile, matching Trump’s virulent anti-immigration actions, according to human rights activists in the borderlands.
In Mexico, the already-disorderly process of seeking asylum or permission to enter the United States has turned utterly chaotic. Gente Unida founder Enrique Morones said the situation was “a red hot mess.”
“For so many years we heard people say things like migrants need to get in line,” he said. “There never was a clear line. Now there is no line.”
Altruistic Mexicans like Judith Cabrera de la Rocha has seen lines – lines of women eager to stay at the Borderline Crisis Center that she serves as co-director. Anxiety and fear have been augmented with despair and resignation, she said. Cabrera said she is also troubled by the turn of events and the chaos it has unleashed, but she and her team are keeping their heads up and trying to find a way to help the desperate people who have shown up at the Center’s door.
Cabrera is plenty unhappy with Trump and his immigration wrecking crew, but even more disappointed in her own government, which she said is acting weak and supplicant to Trump. Mexican soldiers and police as now doing America’s dirty work, she said.
“When the last caravan (of migrants) from Central America arrived in 2018 there were 7,000 people,” she said. “No other caravan has made it to the border because the Mexican National Guard stops them. They use brute force to disperse them, they don’t let them transit.”
Like Trump, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has clamped down on refugees, said Cabrera.
“Previously people were able to cross Mexico with a humanitarian visa,” she said. “Now they are required to apply for a humanitarian visa to get asylum in Mexico. Once you seek asylum in Mexico, you are not eligible to seek asylum in the United States. All of this is the Mexican government colluding with the U.S. in order to seal off the border. Mexico is the guard dog of the border for the United States.”
DEADLY WILDERNESS/AMPUTATION TRAIN
Borderlands Crisis Center is the shelter of last resort for women and girls from Southern Mexico, Central America and South America. Venezuelan, Brazilian and Colombia refugees have to cross the formidable Darien Gap, one of the most remote and dangerous regions on the globe. About 140 miles long and stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, the Darien region covers southern Panama and extends into Colombia. It is a vast river delta and swampland ringed by impenetrable rain forests boxed in by steep mountains. It is the planet’s hotbed for mosquito-borne disease like malaria and dengue fever. Man-eating wildlife includes crocodiles and caimans in the rivers, swamps and lakes as well as jaguars and 20-foot snakes as thick as a man’s legs. Smaller serpents like coral snakes, bushmasters, boa constrictors and fer-de-lance pit vipers (the most venomous snake in the Western Hemisphere) are more dangerous. Even the palm trees have spikes like daggers.
Other than desperate refugees, the human activity includes Colombian paramilitary guerillas, drug cartels and criminals who prey on migrants.
Cabrera said the monsters and hellish landscape of the Darien Gap is not the greatest challenge for refugees. Mexico’s landscape of violence and shattered infrastructure can kill the unwary. There is the notorious train La Bestia (the beast), a rattletrap deathtrap that migrants sneak aboard at stops or chase after while it is getting underway. Hundreds of migrants have lost hands, arms and legs from falls. Scores die every year.
“The worst part of the journey is crossing Mexico and its terrible violence,” she said. “We are talking about women and families of all nationalities that have left everything behind never to return because they were going to enter the United States.”
At least that was the plan.
Trump’s cancellation of the CBP One app – the Biden-era technological aid to assist with asylum appointments – basically terminated all communication between refugees and their allies in Mexico and the American government. Cabrera called it unmatched cruelty
“We had a family with an appointment for January 20 at 8 p.m.” she said. “The 5 a.m. appointments went in. At 9 a.m. and on everything was canceled. They lingered hopefully for days, but nothing changed. There were thousands of cancellations that week and thousands more in following weeks. We sheltered a pair of Colombians and the four families who had an appointment. It was devastating.”
Suddenly, she said, thousands were stranded throughout Mexico,” Cabrera said. “We accompanied an Iranian family stranded in Tuxla, a Jamaican stuck in Tabasco. (The termination of the app had) a dire impact. The media does not cover this. Many had plans to unify their families, to reach safety and international protection from persecution. They were all told no.”
A tsunami of bad news followed the initial shockwave.
“Keeping up with the first days of Trump was a full time job,” Cabrera said. “Yet there was no information about what would happen to the migrants. It was very confusing for the women and the staff.”
ESCAPING MEXICO’S VIOLENCE
Yolanda Ramirez, 63, was born in Buenos Aires, Michoacan. She is at Borderline, sheltered from a life of sexual and physical abuse that began when she was eight years old. She travel to el norte in hopes of getting a visa.
“I want to go to the United States because, no matter what, there is hope for justice,” she said. “If something were to happen to me, the government will listen. Women have no protection in Mexico. I sued my husband many times. He was violent, but I was never able to put him in jail. They let him do whatever he wanted to me. All I want now is to not go through this abuse any more in the years I have left to live.”
Ramirez is, sadly, a fairly typical story, Cabrera said.
“The day migrants arrive they are welcomed by the women here and a tent is prepared for them,” she said. “They receive basic supplies, sleeping mats and blankets. Rules are explained. In the morning when they get up, they work on the cleaning roll. At 10 a.m. there are activities. They have lunch at noon. The doors are closed at 8 p.m.”
Cabrera has to raise her voice to be heard over the deafening rock en espanol from an adjacent storefront in the tumbledown shopping center in downtown Tijuana. Her face is awash in the midday sun reflecting off the chipped white-washed walls.
Most refugees at Borderline Crisis Center cannot simply “go back where you came from” as Trump and his appointees demand, said Cabrera. Many refugees are fleeing death squads, cartel violence, political corruption and an agrarian system bled dry by NAFTA and predatory commerce.
“Those who can return to their place of origin do,” she said. “But not everyone can. It is not safe for everyone to return. People who seek asylum are from different social stratus. Some can pay, some sold everything they had and incurred debt to reach the border. The poorest refugees are stranded at the border until they can secure more funds to return home, assuming it is safe.”
Mexico, like the United States, no longer bothers to send refugees back to the countries of origin. Often they are just sent somewhere else – anywhere else. Cabrera said the National Migration Institute and the National Guard dump people in Tapachula and Tabasco.
“They are prison cities,” she said. “Migrants can’t leave there until they are regularized in Mexico. That process can take over half a year because the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid is severely backed up. The National Guard prevents migrants from leaving. They close the roads, check cars and persecute them. They go on every passenger bus to check documents. Sometimes they destroy documents and take people off the bus.”
Borderline Crisis Center is the kind of place Cabrera said she wishes was not necessary but glad exists. “It is a safe space free from violence where women can feel independent,” she said. “We want women to believe they can manage their own story.”
Reaching the Center is a journey through the darkest corners of Tijuana. Streets consumed by pot holes, decayed sidewalks and rows of crusted cardboard boxes occupied by filthy men. Urine streaks the pavement.
TIJUANA’S MEAN STREETS
It is a street of men who possess nothing but hope, and even that is dwindling. Dirty clothes hang on their gaunt frames. They lean toward passersby, silently, as if waiting for a blessing to free them. Instead, they often meet cartel recruiters looking for ‘soldados,’ men and boys desperate enough to become curriers or assassins.
The sheltered women nearby know they are the blessed. Iris Janine, 18, is one of them.
“I feel very good,” she said. “I feel protected, like being with my family.”
Iris (a pseudonym) said she left her grandmother’s loving home in hopes of rekindling a relationship with her mother. Instead she found horrific sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. She escaped as soon as she turned 18. Her 17-year-old stepsister followed her. For three days, they lived on the streets. Sleeping on park benches, they suffered at the hands of street criminals until they found Borderline and peace. They are in hiding, waiting for the stepsister to turn 18 so they can live with Iris’ grandmother.
Borderline is slowly losing residents, said Cabrera, but for the wrong reasons.
“We currently have 24 women,” she said. “Normally we have 30 to 60. When Trump (took power) and cancelled the CBP One app, people lost hope of getting an asylum appointment. They returned home. The remaining women are mostly Mexicans displaced by the violence in Guerrero, Hidalgo and Michoacan.”
Serving the wounded women of Borderline Crisis Center can be soul sucking, but also the most rewarding work a person could do, said Cabrera. Everyone can help, she said.
“Monetary donations give us the most flexibility,” she said, “but people can also contribute their time, groceries, personal hygiene articles and cleaning supplies.”
Small things matter for people with nothing.
