No water, no food, no supplies: For several months in California, migrants who manage to cross the border with Mexico have been crowding into camps in the middle of the desert, where they have to endure squalid conditions that associations denounce.
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Activists denounce the existence of these “open-air detention camps,” monitored by the Border Patrol, where deportation candidates have to wait for days while their cases are processed by immigration authorities.
“The border police told us that this is the new norm,” Erika Pinheiro, director of the NGO Al Otro Lado, told AFP outside a camp in the border town of Jacumba.
AFP
According to them, seven such camps have been set up in California since September.
Jacumba hosts 800 people a day, who are held there by police while they wait for a place to become available in a treatment center.
“They are warned that if they leave these camps they will be deported,” she explains. “But the Border Patrol does not provide them with food, water, shelter or medical assistance.”
AFP
Together with other associations, Al Otro Lado tries to close these gaps by providing basic needs and care.
Hostile desert
Heat during the day, temperatures below zero at night: the desert, infested with snakes and scorpions, is a hostile environment.
Migrants arriving here pass through a hole created in a mountain along the border wall.
The health condition they face is deplorable. There are only two shabby toilets on the wasteland, adults and children sleep in damaged tents and warm themselves as best they can at makeshift fires that they light with branches collected here and there, AFP found.
AFP
Many of them have to spend several nights there. Border police give them colored bracelets that indicate the day of their arrival and are used to identify who should leave first.
A 13-year-old boy died in the camp last weekend. Associations believe it was an accident and fear further tragedies.
Since May, the vast majority of migrants have had to submit their asylum application via the CBP One application. Its use has led to a bottleneck at the border: according to associations that denounce the systematization, it can take months to get an appointment.
AFP
“The application is only available in English, Spanish and Creole,” regrets Ms. Pinheiro, referring to the many migrants who do not understand these languages.
In Jacumba, most of the candidates for exile are Chinese or Turks. The others come from Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Colombia, Ecuador and even Peru.
Among them, Jimmy – who uses a pseudonym for fear of reprisals against his family – crossed 10 countries in 35 days to escape China. A trip that cost him $12,000.
“The situation in China is not good, I don't want to live there,” he told AFP.
Presidential election
Immigration is likely to be the subject of a tough political confrontation during the 2024 presidential election, where Joe Biden has every chance of running again against Donald Trump.
The Democratic president is regularly accused of laxity by the Republican opposition. And his predecessor, who spent billions building the border wall, is now promising to close it with the help of the army when he returns to power.
An explosive context that runs counter to the deep and complex reforms of the immigration system recommended by experts.
Given the country's extreme polarization on the issue, Ms. Pinheiro eventually became suspicious.
“The Border Patrol, and especially their union, is a very pro-Trump political organization,” she believes. According to her, “they are trying to show that the border is out of control.”
Neither the administration nor the union that brought together its representatives responded to AFP's request.
But on the ground, certain officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, complain about their lack of resources.
“We're doing what we can, but we're overwhelmed,” admits an agent as night falls on Jacumba.
Migrants continue to arrive no matter what happens.
Carla Morocho was eight months pregnant and fled Ecuador in the hope that her child would be born in a less violent and more prosperous country.
“I don’t want him to suffer like I did,” she whispers as she sits around the campfire with her husband. For them, as for the other members of the camp, there is no going back.
“I know I’m going to suffer a little more,” she explains. “But I know it’s worth it.”