Sonora shelters see mix of asylum seekers, deportees
By Daisy Zavala Magaña
Migrant shelters in Nogales, Sonora primarily accommodated two groups of populations over the past week: migrants who had hoped to request asylum in the United States, and individuals who had been deported by U.S. authorities.
Joanna Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative, said the KBI shelter had reached capacity on Jan. 23 after many migrants were stuck in limbo after President Donald Trump shut down CBP One, the main avenue migrants had been using to gain legal entry into the United States.
Meanwhile, the San Juan Bosco shelter had begun to assist larger numbers of migrants who were deported from the United States, according to director Juan Francisco Loureiro. Those daily arrivals included individuals who had already gained legal entry through CBP One, migrants who had crossed the border through the desert, and people with longtime roots in the United States who held no legal status.
Voices from the Border, a Patagonia-based humanitarian nonprofit, had also helped deportees find immediate shelter by funding their temporary stays at hotels in Nogales, Sonora.
“The mood is confusion and desperation,” said India Aubry, a volunteer with Voice from the Border. “Everything is in flux. Nothing is definitive.”
Asylum seekers continue to arrive amid processing restrictions
By Daisy Zavala Magaña
As the temperature hovered near 100 degrees last Saturday, a migrant mother placed a damp rag on her son’s face, trying to keep him cool as he attempted to sleep under a makeshift camp along the western edge of Santa Cruz County, just steps away from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The mother, who preferred to identify herself only as Roxana, said she and her two children had fled El Salvador due to increasing gang violence. As the two endured the scorching sun that afternoon, Roxana hoped they would be picked up by U.S. Border Patrol for a chance at an asylum hearing.
"I'm hoping we can stay and be safe, especially my kids,” she said.
Like Roxana and her two children, hundreds of other migrants have continued crossing the country’s southern border through the desert in an attempt to request asylum in the United States. But their chances at securing an asylum hearing remain uncertain as the federal government enforces President Joe Biden’s latest restrictions.
Biden’s executive order, which went into effect June 5, impedes migrants from seeking asylum when border encounters reach an average of 2,500 individuals or more for seven consecutive days, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security fact sheet summarizing the proclamation.
Asylum-seekers detail immediate deportations, no fear screenings
By Daisy Zavala Magaña
In early June, Mayra Salazar and her family left their small hometown in the Mexican state of Guerrero after a drug cartel gained control of the area.
By late June, the family four had made its way north and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to request asylum in the United States. But met with new asylum restrictions, Salazar’s family spent three days in a U.S. detention center before being deported to Nogales, Sonora – all without being able to express concerns for their safety.
“An official told me, ‘If you don’t sign (the deportation papers), then you won’t see your kids. We’ll separate you,’” Salazar said, adding that she opted to sign the documents over fear of parting with her kids amid the uncertainty.
Last week, just days after being deported, Salazar comforted her daughter while the family took refuge inside the Albergue San Juan Bosco, a migrant shelter in Nogales, Sonora. Salazar was now forced to come up with a new plan to ensure her family’s safety.
“We can’t go back home, and if we had known, we wouldn’t have gone through this process,” Salazar said of her deportation experience. “It was humiliating. We can bear anything, but not the girls.”
Migrant advocates brace for Trump’s return to office
By Daisy Zavala Magaña
A few months ago, Agustin Gonzalez was going about his daily life as a cheese vendor in his home state of Guerrero in southern Mexico. But amid increasing violence and extortions against small business owners like himself, Gonzalez fled north to request legal entry into the United States.
As he spent days in a Nogales, Sonora shelter, waiting for an immigration appointment that will likely take months, he held onto hope of finding safety and reuniting with his family in the United States.
“That’s my biggest yearning,” Gonzalez said while speaking to the NI in early December. “I didn’t want to leave home… but there’s no end in sight to the violence we see.”
The Kino Border Initiative, a binational organization that advocates for migrants’ rights, has been helping hundreds of migrants just like Gonzalez in recent years. But considering President Elect Donald Trump’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration, KBI employees have been bracing for what they expect will be a drastic shift in local migrant populations after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Trump, who’s preparing for his second term in office, has promised to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants living in the United States, and end legal avenues for asylum-seeking migrants. For instance, he’s vowed to terminate the CBP One app, in which asylum-seeking migrants can request an appointment with U.S. immigration officials, and end the Temporary Protected Status program, which shields immigrants from deportation if their countries have been deemed unsafe, but the program does not offer a pathway to citizenship.
WA recipients await DACA future as Congress works for immigration deal
By Daisy Zavala Magaña
Karen Gámez López’s sense of security has waned over the last nine years.
The reality of an unstable future in the U.S., a country she’s called home since she was 3, has cemented for the 27-year-old as conservative Republican leaders spearhead efforts to end the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that offers legal protections and work authorizations to over an estimated 600,000 undocumented individuals.
Gámez López, among the roughly 16,000 DACA recipients in Washington, has held that status for nearly a decade. But an initial glimmer of hope has dimmed with every attempt and failure by Congress over the years to pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship.
“I don’t want to live undocumented forever, but the years just go by,” she said.