Nogales, Mexico — As local food vendors, commuters and American travelers went about their day, migrants deported by the U.S. to this Mexican border town sat idle, visibly demoralized and disoriented.
“I’m desperate,” said Emmanuel, a migrant from Mexico who had returned from the U.S. earlier in the day. “I don’t know what to do.”
Emmanuel said he wanted to work in the U.S. and send money to his family in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. But shortly after illegally entering Arizona, Emmanuel was apprehended by U.S. border agents and sent back to Mexico.
Asked about his next steps, Emmanuel said he might return to Chiapas, noting that U.S. officials told him he would face jail time if he tried to enter the U.S. illegally again. He was one of dozens of migrants deported to Nogales on a recent Thursday morning in late August.
That day, dozens of migrants, most of them families with young children, waited to be escorted by officials and volunteers at a Mexican government facility near one of the ports of entry that connect the U.S. Nogales to its Mexican counterpart. The port of entry is where countless trucks, cars and pedestrians legally cross the international border every day, but it is also where U.S. immigration officials deport Mexican migrants who enter Arizona illegally.
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Some of the deportees were without shoelaces, which U.S. immigration officials confiscated over concerns that migrants would harm themselves. They had few, if any, belongings. Several wore the standard-issue clothing provided by the U.S. Border Patrol. A group of U.S. volunteers offered the deportees fruit and guidance, including directions to shelters in Nogales where they could stay while they figured out their next steps. The deported children were given toys.
Rosalis and her young daughters were also deported to Nogales that Thursday morning. The Mexican mother said she traveled to the U.S. border after a man began harassing her daughters in their hometown. She said she tried to explain to U.S. immigration officials why she was coming — to no avail.
“My daughters are in danger,” Rosalis said in Spanish. “I wanted to give them an explanation, for my children,” she continued, bursting into tears.
These scenes in Nogales play out most mornings, volunteers said. Since President Biden called upon In early June, the president was given sweeping powers to restrict access to the overburdened U.S. asylum system, a move that has led to a sharp increase in the number of migrants returning to Mexican border cities like Nogales.
“The deportations are happening 24/7,” said Dora Rodriguez, a Tucson resident who travels to Nogales four days a week to help the deportees.
“Risk everything”
Biden’s executive action upends U.S. asylum law, which typically allows migrants physically on U.S. soil to seek asylum as a way to fight deportation. But under his June proclamation, migrants who cross the southern border between legal points of entry are generally disqualified from asylum.
The new rules also removed the requirement that U.S. immigration officials ask migrants if they feared harm if they were deported, putting the onus on them to express that fear in order to be interviewed by U.S. asylum officials. The measures have led to a dramatic decline in those who are granted access to the U.S. asylum system. They have also allowed officials to more quickly deport migrants from Mexico, Central America and other countries where the U.S. regularly carries out deportations.
Deportations of migrants as a percentage of encounters at the southern border more than doubled after Biden’s order, according to recent court testimony from Royce Murray, a top immigration official at the Department of Homeland Security. During the first two months of the order’s implementation, the department conducted 62 repatriations per 100 border encounters, up from 26 repatriations per 100 encounters, Murray said.
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Coupled with a months-long campaign by Mexico to stop migrants and scorching summer temperatures, restrictive asylum policies have led to a more than 75% drop in illegal border crossings record heights in December. In July, the number of illegal border crossings fell for the fifth consecutive month to 56,400, the lowest level since September 2020. In August, border crossings rose slightly to 58,000, but remained at the lowest level in four years, internal government figures show.
Rodriguez, the Tucson humanitarian, acknowledged that fewer migrants have been entering the U.S. since Biden’s crackdown took effect. But she said the policy is turning away vulnerable people in need.
“They’re fleeing violence from organized crime, gangs, hunger,” Rodriguez said. “So they’re not criminals. And they’re still punished by our laws.”
Rodriguez also warned that the stricter asylum rules would encourage migrants to sneak into the U.S. through more remote areas, such as the often treacherous Arizona desert, where they could die. Rodriguez noted that when she crossed the U.S. border to escape civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s, several of her tour operators died in the desert.
Rosalis, the Mexican mother who was deported with her daughters, said she wasn’t sure what she would do after the deportation. She said Mexican authorities failed to protect her family. When asked if she considered crossing the U.S. border again, despite knowing she could very well be deported a second time, Rosalis said, “Yes.”
“Sometimes you have to risk everything,” she said.
Mia Salenetri and Cesareo Sifuentes contributed to this report.
