A group of about 2,000 migrants left Mexico’s southern border on Sunday hoping to reach the north of the country and eventually the United States. The development comes weeks earlier the American presidential electionswhere immigration has been a key issue.
Some migrants, such as Venezuelan Joel Zambrano, believe a new administration in the US could put an end to asylum applications through an online system called CBP One.
“That scares us. They say this could change because they could close both the CBP One arrangement and all the services that help migrants,” he said.
Both the lack of jobs in southern Mexico due to a new wave of incoming foreigners and a slowdown in asylum applications in the U.S. have motivated more groups of migrants to leave the region in the past month.
“The situation in my country is very bad, the president does nothing for us. We spent a week at the border, but obtaining documents takes time,” said Honduran Roberto Domínguez, 48. “The documents we get are only for us to be in Tapachula and we cannot leave the city.”
The group that left Sunday was the third and largest since the start of the administration of new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has so far made no changes to the immigration policies of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Groups of 800 and 600 migrants left the region earlier in October.
Activist Luis García Villagrán estimates that there are currently about 40,000 migrants stranded in southern Mexico.
Last month, the Biden administration new regulations announced to strengthen the partial asylum ban it came into effect in June at the southern U.S. border, a move that will likely extend strict immigration policies indefinitely, CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported. Administration officials have cited asylum restrictions as the main reason for the decline in illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border this year.
Many migrants who came to the US through this country a sponsorship program designed to reduce illegal border crossings in recent years will lose their legal status at the end of October as the Biden administration has decided not to expand their coverage.
Under the program, about 214,000 Haitians, 117,000 Venezuelans, 111,000 Cubans and 96,000 Nicaraguans have so far come to the U.S. to live and work legally for two years, under an immigration law known as parole. The first group to begin losing their parole this month are Venezuelans, who arrived in the U.S. through the program in October 2022.
