“We were following their journey,” he said. “And when the law changed, we knew that many of them would end up here.”
“It’s a real social and economic crisis in Venezuela,” said Mendoza, who left the country in 2013, the year President Hugo Chavez died. “People earn less than $40 a month there, but you need $300 or $400 to eat. It’s very difficult what our people live with.”
On Thursday, the Biden administration and Mexico announced a joint agreement to slow migration flows through the region. The number of Venezuelans seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border began to rise in September, threatening a humanitarian crisis in US border cities, including in El Paso.
Mexico has agreed to take back Venezuelans returning under Title 42, a US public health body used throughout the pandemic to quickly return migrants to their countries of origin, or in some cases, to Mexico. The United States has agreed to provide an additional 65,000 temporary work visas to Mexican, Central American and Haitian workers, and has also agreed to accept up to 24,000 Venezuelan immigrants in Mexico by air travel, who can show proof of sponsorship in the United States.
It was the latest move by the Biden administration to build on an expulsion policy that it has publicly avoided but continues to use as a stick to keep immigrants out of the southwest border. While Governor Greg Abbott and other senior Republicans attacked Biden for his so-called “open borders” policy ahead of the midterm elections, the new expulsions showed the administration is leaning toward a more hawkish approach to the recent influx of immigrants.
In El Paso, the municipal government has been moving hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants — legally recognized to pursue their status in the United States — every day to New York and Chicago, in an effort to prevent new arrivals from ending up homeless on the city’s streets.
The humanitarian crisis at the border has now spread to Juarez, a Mexican city that is now used to hosting aliens expelled by the United States this weekend. international bridge..
Juarez saw thousands of Cubans, Central Americans and Haitians establish temporary residence here during the years of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocol. The Mexican government offered them work permits, and many took jobs maquiladora assembly plants or started their own business with seed money from relatives working in the United States
Border Patrol Sector Chief Gloria Chavez has kept immigration crises at bay in El Paso. Will the next president do the same?
Mexican government orders handed over to hundreds of expelled Venezuelans on Friday are alarming migrant shelter and aid workers. With few resources and, in many cases, no close contacts in the United States to provide financial support, it was not clear how the immigrants would be able to “leave Mexican territory from the nearest southern border,” as the document commanded.
Local, state and federal authorities are scheduled to meet later on Saturday as the number of expelled Venezuelans is expected to increase, said Enrique Valenzuela, director of the Chihuahua State Migrant Assistance Agency.
“The information we have so far raises more doubts and questions than answers for a population that needs to make decisions about their future,” Valenzuela said.
Mendoza said he is asking his countrymen to change their thinking. He said there are job opportunities in Mexico, too — especially in Juarez, where hundreds of factories are always looking for more workers. But he said Mexico needed to present a chance.
“Those who have the desire to work, should have the opportunity simply to live a life within this country,” he said. “Venezuelans are hardworking workers. The Mexican government should give them the same opportunities it has given others.”
Juan Carlos Quevedo, 31, listened to Mendoza’s impromptu sermon with his head bowed. He worked as a fisherman in the coastal state of Falcon until he could no longer buy or find gasoline for the boats he was working on, in a country whose vast oil reserves made it among the richest in the region.
He crossed in the hours before the US-Mexico deal, and the border patrol brought him back to Juarez on Friday and had no idea what he was going to do next. He carried a backpack with a roll of toilet paper and a plastic bag with the only pose he’s kept with him since leaving Venezuela: a palm-sized laminated card with the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe.
“All we did to get here,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s hard, but we’re here.”
