While illegal crossings drop along U.S. border, migrants in Mexico grow desperate

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico — Desperate and exhausted, the migrants gathered around a tree that offered them some shade from the relentless sun.

They traveled from countries throughout Latin America, including Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru and Venezuela. Some of them were parents traveling with young children, including toddlers. Others were young. Some of the teenagers appeared to be unaccompanied minors traveling without their parents.

Everyone shared a common goal: to enter the USA, which was just a few meters away. But in their path were miles of barbed wire and other barriers erected by the state of Texas at the direction of Governor Greg Abbott to stop migrants from crossing illegally into the United States.

“They are trying to kill us,” one of the migrants said in Spanish, showing CBS News cameras just how sharp the edge could be.

Some said they tried to pass through the barriers several times without success. At one point, the migrants gathered around the cameras to describe the austere conditions in the makeshift camp they had set up near the US border, with tents and blankets.

They said they had been sleeping near that tree for days, some even two weeks, braving the elements for a chance to enter the United States. “We don’t have food. We don’t have water,” a Venezuelan woman carrying a small child said in Spanish.

Rene, a migrant from Honduras, said he had been sleeping outdoors for 15 days after traveling to Mexico with his young daughters, ages 3 and 9. He pointed to a bushy area where they slept, using blankets to protect themselves from the cold temperatures at night and in the morning.

“I don’t sleep all night,” René said in Spanish, noting that he closes his eyes only intermittently to make sure his daughters are okay.

Illegal crossings fall

Illegal crossings along the U.S. southern border have declined more than 40% this year since reaching record levels in December. In April, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded about 129,000 illegal crossings, the second monthly drop in a row, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News. The pattern defied historical trends — migration typically increases in the spring.

Still, tens of thousands of migrants are estimated to be waiting in Mexico, in places like Ciudad Juárez, where shelter space is limited and conditions are sometimes dire.

Many in Mexico are waiting to secure an appointment to enter the U.S. at an official port of entry through a Biden administration program powered by a smartphone app known as CBP One. But the process is limited to 1,500 slots per day. And the demand in Mexico is much greater.

Facing wait times that often last for months, some migrants, like those in the makeshift camp, become desperate and decide to try to enter the United States illegally. But first they must overcome Texas barriers to surrender to federal Border Patrol agents, the initial step in the years-long asylum process.

Karina Breceda, who oversees migrant shelters in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, called the barricades set up by Texas “inhumane,” noting that it has helped some migrants, including children, who were cut by the barbed wire.

“The U.S. is the greatest country in the world,” Breceda said. “I think we can have a policy that treats this situation with dignity.”

But on the U.S. side of the border, Sergeant Eliot Torres of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the cable was supposed to serve as a “signal” warning migrants not to enter the U.S. between official ports of entry, which is a crime. federal. Texas also sought to make the act a state crime through a law known as SB4, but federal courts blocked the measure at the request of the Biden administration.

“The inhumane part is in the… optics, right?” Torres said near a stretch of the border near El Paso that Texas has been fortified with barbed wire and additional fencing. “That’s what people perceive it to be.”

Torres acknowledged that migrants could be cut off by a thread. Asked if this is part of the deterrence objective, he said: “Yes.” But Torres noted that Texas authorities provide medical aid to migrants who are injured or in danger.

“We’re here protecting our border, but we’re also not going to… just let someone sit there, hurt,” Torres said.

Abbott and other Texas officials have credited their actions — from the barbed wire to the arrests of migrants on charges of trespassing on state property — for the sharp decline in migrant crossings in recent months, which has been most acute in the Lone Star State of Texas. than in Arizona and California. .

But federal authorities believe the main catalyst is an aggressive crackdown on U.S.-bound migrants by Mexican authorities, who have stepped up efforts to stop migrants from boarding trains and buses that would take them closer to the U.S. border. They are also deporting some migrants to southern Mexico.

Still, some migrants like René have managed to reach northern Mexico despite the crackdown and are willing to wait indefinitely for an opportunity to reach the US.

“We came for the American dream,” he said.