Local media reported that hundreds of immigrants from Latin America tried to reach the United States on Monday from the Mexican city of Matamoros (northeast) after a strong storm destroyed their camp at the border.
It’s the first border incident of this magnitude since the end of “Heading 42” on May 11, a pandemic-related measure that has allowed the United States for the past three years to promptly turn back visa-free immigrants on behalf of the health emergency.
It was replaced by a new system with restrictions on the right of asylum in particular.
Darlie Mercado, a Venezuelan traveling with her family, told reporters that they decided to cross after an afternoon storm destroyed their makeshift tents.
They reach the end of the bridge but are confronted by US agents with shields. On her return to the Mexican region, she said, “My husband asked them if they didn’t have wives, if they didn’t have children, but the guards refused and drove us away.”
According to local media, hundreds of immigrants, mostly Venezuelans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, have tried to enter the United States in this way.
In videos posted to social media, the migrants can be seen progressing in groups, stampeding and screaming, onto a narrow covered bridge that leads to Brownsville, Texas.
Some of them carried small children, while others were accompanied by teenagers who tried to protect them with their bodies.
Mexican authorities tried to close the crossing but were overwhelmed.
Last Friday, in Nuevo Laredo, another nearby town in Texas, an international bridge had to be closed after an attempted forcible crossing by a group of Russians apparently frustrated at not being able to process their own asylum claims made based on the ones I created. United State.
Since the end of Title 42, immigrants who cross the border illegally can be sent back to their country and punished.
The number of arrivals at the border of undocumented foreigners, mostly Venezuelans, who had resumed before May, has decreased in recent weeks, according to authorities.
But thousands of migrants are stuck at the Mexican border hoping to get an appointment with the US Immigration Service so they can enter the US and seek refuge there.
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