14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 26 November 2024 — Cuban Yunier Pérez Valdés is confident of being in the United States before Donald Trump assumes power on January 20 and, as he threatened, starts mass deportations. “I’m against the clock,” he tells 14ymedio. His sister María Elena and her brother-in-law arrived in Tijuana, the border with the United States, and after crossing the San Ysidro checkpoint they turned themselves in last Friday. But he confesses in anguish: “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I stay in Mexico.”
In his first term in the White House (2017-2021), Trump implemented restrictive measures such as the “Stay in Mexico” program, which forced asylum seekers to wait on Mexican territory while their cases were resolved. “If you don’t find a way before Trump, everything will overflow at the border,” estimates Pérez, who is in Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas. “Once again, all Cubans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans will look for a way to enter the country illegally.”
The young man, 23 years old and originally from Matanzas, had to sell everything he owned to be able to make the journey. “I have no money, I don’t have a house, I don’t have a family. I tell the agents that in Cuba we are starving and they laugh.”
A policewoman in Tapachula asked him if he was politically persecuted. “They don’t understand that Cubans leave because there are no improvements. There are months of blackouts, without medicines, without work. Where is the humanitarian aid they send for natural disasters? If you protest you are now an enemy and they beat you with sticks,” he laments.
This Monday, some 3,000 migrants arrived at the Migration offices in that same border city, comments Pérez, about 100 Cubans among them, but “the rule,” is to assist 1,000; of those, 700 are there for CBP One Program*. “The rest process documents for their regulation. There are two lines, although there were problems because some Haitians and Colombians wanted their papers immediately.”
The Cuban migrant stays overnight in the Bicentennial Park. There he met the Venezuelan José de Casa, who last October registered through the CBP One application, but the answer has not reached him. “The agents ask me not to despair, but it’s not easy, I’m here without money. The little I brought ended in days and I can’t get out of here (Tapachula),” says the Venezuelan.
They say that they tried to clean windshields on the streets, as other migrants have done, but “there is a mafia that controls them,” denounces the Venezuelan. “From what you earn you must share the money. ’You have to pay for the territory,’ they tell us.”
In that same place Pérez Valdés has met dozens of Cubans. “Many left with the caravan of 1,500 people last Wednesday. “They do it to avoid extortion and kidnappings by coyotes,” he says.
According to official data from the United States authorities, arrests in September for illegally crossing the border from Mexico were at their lowest point in the last four years.
Despite a 76% drop in the daily detention of migrants on the US border since December, according to the Mexican government, irregular migration through this country rose 193% year-on-year to a record of more than 172,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
