We’re used to seeing headlines about the U.S.-Mexico border being overwhelmed with migrants seeking asylum. But, right now, the border is the most quiet it's been in years.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ended asylum applications at the border, throwing out a Biden era program that allowed migrants to apply for an asylum appointment via an app called CBP One. The move left an estimated 270,000 people in Mexico who were waiting for their appointments with nowhere to go.
Now, Daisy Zavala Magaña, a reporter for The Nogales International, reports that with nowhere to go, many of them are changing tactics and applying for asylum in Mexico instead.
Zavala Magaña joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
DAISY ZAVALA MAGAÑA: So for the last month, there's been kind of a standstill in terms of what we've been seeing with migrants arriving from Mexico or other countries. People aren't really arriving anymore like they used to.
But the people who are here, that stayed here waiting for CBP One before it shut down are now looking toward seeking asylum in Mexico to sort of find some stability as they hold on to hope that the asylum system in the U.S. will, will be fixed sometime soon, right, that they'll have a pathway.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, so the pathway to the U.S. is pretty much cut off at this point, so they're looking to Mexico instead. How is the Mexican asylum system handling this? How is the government responding there?
MAGAÑA: It's unclear if they're equipped, if Mexico is equipped to handle the increase in claims that have been filed. But reports from the LA Times and my own reporting here in Nogales, Sonora, seem to indicate that they're not ready.
Because under law, also, what's signifying this to us is that under law the agency tasked with resolving cases, you know, telling them yes or no, it's supposed to take 45 days, but right now, in Nogales, Sonora, we're seeing wait times of six months to a year.
GILGER: So, taking a long time and it sounds like there are some real kind of barriers in place for folks, challenges in applying for asylum in Mexico, just as they would have seen challenges applying in the U.S., right?
MAGAÑA: Yeah, it's, it seems simple on paper, but with the attorney at the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Sonora, was relaying to me is that when migrants from other countries arrived to Mexico, they have a window of 30 days where they're supposed to file their claims.
They can still do it outside that window, but it just gets more complicated, more paperwork, more things that they have to do, and we don't have embassies here at our border, so they're risking having to drive further north without a regularized status, right, without a legal status.
GILGER: Right, so describe for us what life is like for migrants, undocumented migrants in Mexico on the Mexican side of the border. I mean, like, they're vulnerable in many ways, but are they also just vulnerable to deportation the way many migrants are being deported here in the U.S. right now?
MAGAÑA: In theory, yes, but what has been the practice in Mexico is that they'll deport them further south in Mexico, so maybe not to their country of origin, but just further south, but we, what I've been hearing from migrants that have been there and from the Kino Border Initiative is that they faced a lot more violence in those regions than they might in somewhere like Nogales, Sonora.
GILGER: Let me ask you, Daisy, about what this means for migrants in the country if they are able to seek asylum there and get it. I mean, does it give them long term stability, short term stability? Can they work if they don't have some kind of status like that?
MAGAÑA: Yes, so even just initiating the process gives them more stability than not because they don't have to wait to receive word on whether they're approved or not to request what they call a humanitarian card, which will give them the ability to legally work. And while they're awaiting word for whether they're approved or not, they can also begin accessing health care and enroll their children in schools, right?
GILGER: So tell us about some of the families that you have met there and, and they, they are families like they have little kids there, right?
MAGAÑA: Yeah, it's been mostly families in terms of the people that have come to the border to seek asylum, with patterns of deportations that might be different, but with people requesting asylum, yes, a lot of families. And we're talking, you know, I've seen families with, you know, 2-month-old babies or several children that are elementary age or just school aged, and they've traveled through various countries to get here to the border.
GILGER: So why did many of these families decide to stay in Nogales? From the folks you've talked to, like, do they feel like they cannot go home?
MAGAÑA: Yeah, basically out of options. They can't go home for people that are foreigners and for people that are Mexican, they have felt a little safer. And Nogales, for one reason or another, maybe if they have been fleeing from, say, criminal groups. Nogales, Sonora might be in a different corridor as we would call it, so they might not have as much control to get knowledge of their whereabouts, if that makes sense.
GILGER: Yeah. So as we're seeing the border basically shut down into the U.S., I wonder, like, it doesn't stop folks coming from, you know, unsafe places and unstable places in Central and South America, I'm sure they seem to be coming to Mexico anyway, but are some giving up hope? Are they self-deporting?
MAGAÑA: What I've heard from Kino is that people have left, and it's kind of unclear exactly where maybe they stayed within Mexico, but they left Nogales because Nogales is known to not have a lot of job opportunities, so there really isn't economic stability for them here.
But the reality is that they really don't have anywhere else to go.
