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Venezuelans establish encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande

IN FRONT OF THE BORDER BRIDGE BETWEEN JUAREZ AND EL PASO

Morgan Smith

October 28 started early with a visit to the Respettrans migrant shelter in Juárez to deliver much needed food and clothing. I was concerned that it had become overcrowded with the recent influx of Venezuelans but there are only 280 people there, mostly women with children, and surprisingly no one from Venezuela. Venezuelans establish encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande.

After this brief visit I drove west along the river with three destinations in mind, a school for Tarahumara Indians where I would leave oranges and school supplies, a mental facility called Punto Zero where I would donate beans and rice, and then another mental facility, Vision in Action where volunteers from El Paso would be having a hot dog day for the patients.

It was a tight schedule that would end with the long drive back to Santa Fe.

The reality, however, is that nothing goes as planned on these trips.

Venezolanos establecen campamento a orillas del rio Bravo

Venezuelans establish encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande

I looked to my right to the Chihuahuita area on the edge of El Paso where we had seen hundreds of migrants being processed for asylum claims on September 13. I wrote about that experience and how efficient and humane the Border Patrol agents were.

Now there was another huge crowd but it was on the Mexican side. I pulled off the highway, drove up over the curb and onto a flat bare area that faced the river and the US. Below this little hill were dozens of tents, maybe one hundred in all.

My car was immediately surrounded by dozens of Venezuelan migrants who were hoping that I had food, clothing, more tents, something to support their stay.

They were here on the Mexican side of the border because of the Biden administration’s early October decision to invoke Title 42 against Venezuela. This is a public health policy first used by Donald Trump to allow our officials to expel migrants at the border, even if they were exercising their legal right to apply for asylum.

These hundreds of Venezuelans waiting in Mexico by the river knew that if they crossed into the United States to apply for asylum, they would be detained and then deported but from a different city – perhaps across from Tijuana, Mexico instead of El Paso. This would be an extraordinarily disruptive process for them. So they have camped out in these squalid conditions, waiting to see if the policy might be reversed.

The Biden plan does allow for the processing of 24,000 Venezuelans but that is just a drop in the bucket.

There were no Mexican soldiers or police there. The Venezuelans told me that the police initially ordered them to leave but haven’t enforced that order. Part of the Title 42 process does include an agreement with Mexico that these Venezuelans can stay there but it is a miserable existence.

Some have found jobs in Juárez; the women have had better luck than the men but the pay is very low.

Venezuelans establish encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande

I was overwhelmed, didn’t know how to respond to the dozens of Venezuelans who had gathered around me. Yes, there were huge numbers applying for asylum when I was on the US side on September 13 but the Border Patrol was doing an exceptional job of processing them. Due to the high numbers, some ended up sleeping on the streets of El Paso temporarily but that couldn’t have been worse than this Juárez tent city.

Is this just a pre-election way to reduce the visibility of migrants in the US and show the Republicans that the Biden administration had the border under control? An “out of sight out of mind” process? But isn’t the “immigration debate” is so deeply ingrained now and so divisive that no one’s minds are going to be changed.

I’ve been crossing the border at least once a month for more than a decade and, in a small way, help a number of humanitarian organizations but I have never before felt the shock and helplessness I felt as I stood among their Venezuelans at their tent city.