Activists and migrants described Texas Law SB4 as inhuman while regretting that it is used for electoral purposes, amid the confusion over the contradictory judicial decisions and the fight between the Government of that state and the US over the migratory crisis that the border with Mexico is experiencing.
This was indicated by Miguel Perdomo, a migrant who comes from Venezuela, and I was waiting on Wednesday, March 20, to cross the Río Bravo through point 36 between the border between Juárez and El Paso, a place where there is once again a large presence of people on the move.
“We are afraid, that is, here we are risking everything: that they return us to our country, or suddenly, God willing, that they give us the opportunity to be processed and let us enter the United States to be able to work and help our families. family on that side, because they are in Venezuela,” he told EFE.
The SB4 law, one of the most drastic anti-immigrant measures in the history of the United States, that would make it a crime for a foreigner to enter Texas irregularly, in addition to empowering state forces to carry out immigration arrests and deportations.
Its application unleashed chaos on Tuesday, March 19, when the United States Supreme Court first allowed the law to be applied before hearing substantive arguments, but in the evening the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals suspended its entry into force.
For his part, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, warned on Wednesday the 20th that his Government will not accept migrants deported by the Government of Texas, if the “draconian law” SB4 comes into force, after it was in force for a few hours. .
While judicial disputes take place in the courts of the United States, the situation on the border between Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) and El Paso (USA) is dramatic.
More than a hundred people on the move were stranded for hours between the razor fence and the Rio Grande, where they endured winds of up to 40 kilometers per hour and temperatures close to zero degrees while they begged for water and food, according to what was found. EFE on Wednesday the 20th.
Migrants point out that they continue to leave their countries due to the lack of work and public safety on a route in which they risk their lives to the United States.
“We have had a very hard time, the train, hills, hills, passing the checkpoints has been very hard. But we want to go through to look for a better life, for our children and everything. Because in our country there is no work, there is nothing,” said María José Gutiérrez González, from Nicaragua, while she cried with frustration sitting on the bank of the river.
Electoralism with migrants
Pastor Gigio Heredia, director of the Hope Center shelter in Ciudad Juárez, stressed that this law adds another snub to the difficult journey that migrants have had to the border with the United States.
“Well, I describe it as an inhuman law because, the truth is, they are not committing any crime, any crime. I believe that it is an even greater risk for their lives that they are going to be able to attack their freedom, and since they are not criminals, it is true,” he explained.
Heredia also pointed out that it is unfortunate that the political issue is weighing so much on the way in which the Texan government is treating migrants, in the midst of the electoral campaign for the US presidential elections that will take place in November.
All of this in the midst of the unprecedented migratory flow of recent years in the region, where Mexico reported an increase of nearly 77% in irregular migration in 2023, with more than 782 thousand undocumented foreigners detected.
In addition, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) last September declared the border between Mexico and the United States as “the most dangerous land migratory route in the world”, with more than 686 migrants dead or missing in 2022.
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