EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A big group of migrants in Mexico who had been poised to barge into the U.S. over the weekend had been blocked from crossing a bridge main from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to El Paso, Texas, a U.S. Customs and Border Safety spokesman stated.
The migrants had been “posing a possible menace to make a mass entry,” and bodily obstacles had been put as much as prohibit their entry on the Paso Del Norte Worldwide Bridge on Sunday afternoon, spokesman Roger Maier stated in a press release to The Related Press on Monday.
Barricades additionally had been used for a short while Sunday afternoon at an El Paso crossing on the Bridge of Americas and at one in Stanton, Maier stated.
Video of the scene on the Paso Del Norte bridge on Sunday confirmed lots of of migrants brush previous Mexican Nationwide Guard officers on the Mexican aspect, some carrying kids on their shoulders. Many seemed to be Venezuelan, by their accents.
Shouting “We wish to get via!,” the migrants ran as much as the middle line of the bridge, the place U.S. authorities had erected concrete and plastic obstacles strung with concertina wire.
The migrants had been stopped by the barrier, and remained on the Mexican aspect, shouting “Open up for us!” to the U.S. officers. After a time, the migrants ran again towards the Mexican aspect.
Site visitors was reopened and flowing in each instructions as of Sunday night, Maier stated. It wasn’t instantly recognized what induced the tried mass crossing. A message searching for remark was left with the mayor’s workplace in El Paso.
The frenzy throughout the bridge could have been sparked by false rumors, stated Camilo Cruz, who works with the U.N. migration workplace in Ciudad Juarez.
Cruz stated there was “a rumor that they had been going to allow them to cross massively, significantly individuals who arrived with kids.”
Cruz stated the rumors are a recurrent drawback. A few month in the past, messages started circulating “that there have been going to be buses on the U.S. aspect to take them to Canada … and after they arrived, they had been informed it was a lie.”
The worst factor, Cruz stated, is that migrants typically go away the shelters the place they’re staying to attend such mass crossing makes an attempt, solely to search out the shelters full after they return.
Most of the migrants on Sunday seemed to be asylum seekers. One girl held out what seemed to be an appointment slip on the barricade. Migrants searching for asylum, a authorized immigration pathway for folks fleeing persecution in their very own nation, have been pissed off by newly-implemented limits on these exhibiting up on the southwest border, as many Venezuelans do.
There was frustration with the U.S. authorities’s CBPOne cellular app for making appointments to use for asylum, which has been overloaded for the reason that Biden administration launched it Jan. 12. New appointments can be found every day at 6 a.m., however migrants discover themselves stymied by error messages.
Additionally inflicting frustration is a pandemic rule, scheduled to finish Could 11, that denies migrants an opportunity to hunt asylum on grounds of stopping the unfold of COVID-19. Underneath the general public well being rule, often called Title 42, Mexico just lately started taking again Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who crossed.
As well as, the Biden administration has stated it should typically deny asylum to migrants who present up on the U.S. southern border with out first searching for safety in a rustic they handed via.