Four uniformed Mexican immigration officers armed only with handheld radios didn’t hear the pounding footsteps until it was too late. They would be overrun.
A rushing, screaming crowd of migrants, some carrying small children, tumbled down the banks of the Rio Grande, just outside of Matamoros, Mexico.
I watched the immigration officers try to hold the mob back but it was useless. When force failed, they tried common sense.
“Please, the babies! The children! You will hurt the children!’ shouted an officer in Spanish. “The children could drown!” Stop! Please stop what you are doing!’
Regardless, women with young children and men with older children on their shoulders plunged into the river that marks the US-Mexico border.
They’re on their way north to Brownsville, Texas.
And as time ticks down until the expiry of Title 42, the policy that allows US Border Patrol agents to quickly deport illegal border workers, and before new rules come into effect, these migrants decided they couldn’t wait any longer.
I came to Matamoros to speak to some of the thousands of migrants who have flocked here in recent days and weeks.
why did they come Didn’t they hear from the Biden administration that “the border is closed”?
According to the White House, after Title 42 ends, the US will begin enforcing another policy that has been in the pipeline for a long time, namely Title 8.
Four uniformed Mexican immigration officers armed only with handheld radios didn’t hear the pounding footsteps until it was too late. They would be overrun.
A rushing, screaming crowd of migrants, some carrying small children, tumbled down the banks of the Rio Grande, just outside of Matamoros, Mexico.
“Please, the babies! The children! You will hurt the children!’ shouted an officer in Spanish. “The children could drown!” Stop! Please stop what you are doing!’
Under this rule, any migrant who enters the US illegally and applies for asylum without first applying for asylum in another country will be deported and potentially banned from the US for five years.
As far as I know, I’m the only American journalist on site.
And with gunfights raging by rival Mexican cartel factions upriver in Reynosa, this medium-sized northeastern Mexican metropolis just a few miles from the Gulf seemed like a good place to start.
Up to 10,000 immigrants en route to the US have arrived, bringing the city’s population to 520,000, and more are showing up at the city bus station every minute.
Many migrants got off the buses with big smiles. They are so confident in their chances of coming to the US that many of them don’t even bother to set up camp. You go straight over there.
One thing is clear: they do not believe that the border is “closed”.
“Do you know people who let them (the Americans) in?” I asked four young Venezuelan men who had just arrived on the bus and were going straight to a riverside queue to step in.
“Si,” everyone answered in unison and nodded their heads.
“Tell me about it,” I asked. “Lots of people,” said one. ‘Family members.’
“I have two cousins they let in,” explained one man.
Another told me he had a cousin who had crossed the river here a few days ago and showed me the name and address of the hotel in Pidgeon Forge, Tennessee.
A woman holding a young, sleeping child interjected, ‘My mother.’ She’s in.’
Up to 10,000 immigrants en route to the US have arrived, bringing the city’s population to 520,000, and more are showing up at the city bus station every minute.
I came to Matamoros to speak to some of the thousands of migrants who have flocked here in recent days and weeks.
They all want just one thing: a quick trip across the border to seek asylum and then be released into the American interior with whatever permission the Biden administration will give them in the short or long term.
But not everyone is willing to bet on an illegal crossing – at least not right away.
The relatively wealthy can snag a room at the Best Western Hotel where I stay for $70 a night. But the poor mass lives in a vast, ever-expanding city of makeshift shelters that has sprung up along a two-mile stretch of dusty, sparsely wooded land between a city street and the river.
Tons of trash litter the banks, much of it slowly seeping into the Rio Grande below, tangled in a thick blanket of green river grass that completely covers the deceptively strong river currents.
In May it is already hot here. So, despite a row of port-o-pots, the stench of human waste hangs over it all.
Mexican officials – in uniforms or T-shirts with the government’s logo – patrol the streets. Some drive ATVs, others walk. But they are all powerless to stop the migrants as they attempt mass crossings, which has been happening day and night for almost two weeks.
Still, the ongoing threat of deportation under Title 42 deters some from applying to a new humanitarian parole program called CBP-One created by the Biden administration.
After a virtual screening, CBO-One applicants are granted residency in America while their asylum claims are being reviewed. As of mid-April, 99% of applicants have been approved, but many thousands are still pending.
It was here at the Matamoros Best Western that I met my first Dagastanis, a woman and her daughter, sitting at a table with a Belarusian man and a Russian man.
In fact, my hotel and one across the street were full of well-heeled Kyrgyz people from Central Asia, all of whom had won the CBP One lottery.
Tons of trash litter the banks, much of it slowly seeping into the Rio Grande below, tangled in a thick blanket of green river grass that completely covers the deceptively strong river currents.
The Kyrgyz were preparing to be legally taken across the international bridge and handed over or processed in person to the Americans.
I asked a Kyrgyz man what kind of terrible thing happened at home that qualified him for a humanitarian permit.
He refused to say. But when I asked him why he came, he said, “Because the door is open.”
A dozen immigrants in the main camp told me they would wait the necessary weeks or months to get their CBP-One humanitarian entry permit. That is, unless things change after Title 8 goes into effect.
“After Thursday, if you see someone cross the border and apply for asylum and then you see them let you in, what will you do?” I asked a Cuban woman, who said she would stay and on her CBP One await approval.
It was here at the Matamoros Best Western that I met my first Dagastanis, a woman and her daughter, sitting at a table with a Belarusian man and a Russian man.
I asked a Kyrgyz man what kind of terrible thing happened at home that qualified him for a humanitarian permit. He refused to say. But when I asked him why he came, he said, “Because the door is open.”
“If I see or see on TV an official, credible news channel that they’re letting people in, I would,” she said, waving her hand grandly above her head toward the river behind her. ‘And I mean right now.’ Right now.’
Elsewhere in the camp, everyone I spoke to expressed the same strong preference for abandoning their CBP-One applications if they could complete an illegal river crossing faster.
A group of six Venezuelans who have been waiting for CBP-One for several years said they would cross over immediately if they learned the American’s harsh words had turned out to be nonsense.
So the tens of thousands wait and watch.
If the US border does indeed close and America begins enforcing a strict five-year ban on those who don’t follow the rules, then perhaps those migrants will think twice about breaking the law.
But if the Biden administration’s threats prove hollow, the only way for these desperate people is to go north.