So far in 2022, a total of 34 people have died attempting to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico to the United States. The number could rise, Francisco Manrique, a member of the Beta Migrant Protection Group, told 14ymedio “because the river level rose 50 centimeters after the Amistad Dam gates opened this Sunday.”
Among them are Cubans Remedios Atkinson Waterman Torrens, José Luis González and his son Luis Miguel González, according to Attorney General statistics. The first died on March 15 and the second was swept away by the current two days later before drowning.
This river, which Mexicans call Bravo and Americans call Grande, “is a kind of Russian roulette that Cubans play to win their freedom,” says Manrique. “I have saved people who are upset that they are not allowed to continue driving, who would rather die than be deported.” In Coahuila, a border state with the US, the main crossings pass through Ciudad Acuña and Piedras Negras.
There isn’t a day that migrants aren’t exposed to this flow “to reach Del Río in Val Verde County or Eagle Pass in Maverick,” notes the rescuer. Acuña and Piedras Negras are separated by 90 kilometers by land where “it’s common to see people with backpacks, black bags and ropes ready to come by”. The insecure, Manrique continues, “watch the coasts as if analyzing their danger.”
The Rio Grande “is a kind of Russian roulette that Cubans challenge to win their freedom,” says Manrique
On Friday, a family of six from the island, three of them children, stopped by. On Thursday a group of 30. Not all make it. “Coahuila’s plainclothes police arrested a woman and two Cubans on Friday as they were trying to reach the Rio Grande via Callejón Hidalgo,” says the rescuer. Officials reported human trafficking to immigration and led the undocumented migrants to a station.
Migration holds 700 irregular migrants in Coahuila every day, who are transferred to one of the nine offices in the border state. Due to its proximity to the Rio Grande, the delegation on International Bridge II is the most populous. There are many stories in this place. “People go through Facebook groups, Coyote contacts, places where they think the river is waist-deep,” says the lifeguard.
Juan Andrés was arrested on March 24 along with a group of 60 migrants. “The police officers got on the bus and asked us for money so that we could continue our journey. We showed them the papers that we are legally in the country that they gave us in Ciudad Hidalgo (Guatemala border) and they tore them up. They put us in Station International Bridge II and on March 27th they took us to Villahermosa, Tabasco,” says this Cuban, who has 20 days to leave the country. “To return to Piedras Negras, a smuggler wants $800 and to get me to Del Río, $2,500.”
A CID source confirmed to 14ymedio the presence of at least 18 groups dedicated to migrant smuggling in Coahuila. “They use houses on the outskirts of town, shops and warehouses to house people. There they are, going to the US in groups of 20.”
In February, eight members of a network of coyotes bringing “illegals” to the United States were arrested and some gave them false papers. Three days before the end of March, Metropolitan Police arrested Reiner Acosta Salazar, a Cuban, with forged visas for eight Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Colombians.
“Even the backpacks with the clothes were in an Alfa Romeo car with Texas license plates,” says the investigator. “Acosta Salazar is just the contact between Mexico and the US. There is evidence that they are operating out of Nicaragua.”
José Alberto Matos has safe conduct that allows him to spend 180 days in Mexico. This Cuban native of Holguín arrived Saturday at the Paseo del Río, a work developed in 2010 that runs parallel to the I and II border bridges in Piedras Negras. “Safe passage is through Acuña. In Del Río they give probation.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recorded 1,500 illegal crossings per day just to get to Del Rio. This migratory flow skyrocketed after journalists Bill Melugin and Ali Bradley had access to a March 20 email in which the Biden administration ordered border police to release Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans and grant parole on humanitarian grounds.
If Acuña was already living through its worst migration crisis, it deepened after the US government announced the scrapping of Title 42, a mechanism used by Donald Trump since March 2020 to deport more than 1.7 million migrants at its border with Mexico due to the Covid19 pandemic.
A senior US administration official stressed that starting May 23, undocumented adults arriving irregularly would be “expelled” under Title 8, the pre-pandemic immigration rules. “If they cannot prove their legal residency in the US, they will be turned back,” he warned.
The main difference between the regulations is that Title 8 obliges authorities to transfer undocumented immigrants to detention centers for several hours where they can apply for asylum, while Title 42 allows deportation in 15 minutes and no asylum place.
“The crossings through Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo are controlled by drug traffickers. The Gulf Cartel uses keys and colored wristbands for migrant transit.”
What the Cubans face as they transit Mexico and try to cross the Rio Grande are arrests in migration centers, “extortion, threats, payments to coyotes, drug cartels, human trafficking,” Manrique lists for 14ymedio.
The Beta Groups, like the unit he works with, were created in the early 1990s by the Mexican government under the ownership of the National Migration Institute with the aim of protecting the human rights of those who wish to travel through Mexico and cross the northern border .
Mexico designates the United States as “illegal entry points” into the Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa regions, located along the 2,018-kilometer Rio Grande border.
Authorities have identified steps in Tamaulipas through the Miguel Alemán to Roma community in Starr County, Texas. Via Reynosa you reach Hidalgo County. Cameron is another arrival point. Nuevo Laredo is singled out as an area controlled by both Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel.
“The crossings through Matamoros, Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo are controlled by drug traffickers. The Gulf cartel uses keys and colored wristbands for migrant transit,” reveals Manrique. “They charge anywhere from $3,000 to $4,500 to pass you in an inner tube and a life jacket. This is well known, it has been fought, but it has not been eradicated.”
Those who don’t cover the full amount, Manrique says, “are used as mules: they put packages of drugs in their backpacks. They’re a mafia. Some Cubans even paid $10,000 and they’re transported in inflatable boats.”
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