A net, two metres high and covered with barbed wire at the top. This is the first image of the United States that appears before the eyes of migrants trying to start a new life. Days spent in the desert, thinking they would not survive, a journey in which they entrusted their lives into the hands of smugglers, the human traffickers.
On 12 May, Title 42, the extraordinary law inserted by the Trump administration during the Covid 19 pandemic, was abolished. The provision, invoking health reasons, allowed the mass refoulement of migrants who wanted to enter the US from the Mexican border. President Joe Biden decided to revoke this public health order, which had blocked access to asylum seekers at the border for more than three years. While we were told that the border was now open and that Biden was willing and eager for migrants to become Americans, the President replaced the measure with a new set of border enforcement policies that would have more or less the same effect.
Now the situation is only getting worse. «With the elimination of Title 42, an even more punitive law towards migrants was inserted: we now have Title 8. With this new law, people are directly punished if they cross the border», said Dora Rodriguez, a Salvadoran migrant who has been living in Tucson, Arizona, for years, working as a social worker and helping people trying to cross the border. Dora arrived in the United States at the age of 19, in 1980. She is one of 13 Salvadorans who survived when 14 others in the group died after being abandoned by their guide and left to wander near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona.
«The overall approach of the Biden administration is to create legal pathways for entry into the United States and to impose harsher consequences for those who attempt to cross the border illegally», said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Simply showing up at the nation’s gates is no longer enough: asylum seekers can download an app and join an electronic queue. Those who have not first applied for asylum in another country will not be allowed to enter, thus accelerating deportations and changing asylum talks to make them more difficult to pass.
This outlines an acceleration of deportations and a modification of asylum talks to make them more difficult to overcome.
While American newspapers published reports of a newfound calm across the border, within hours of the abolition of Title 42, the consequences of the new measures could be clearly seen and offered a sombre suggestion of the days to come.
Following the call of the state’s right-wing political leaders, armed vigilantes stalked and harassed humanitarian aid providers during the day and raked migrant children in the dark at nightfall. The events followed weeks of escalating tensions, including the arrest of a long-time volunteer aid worker at the border by federal authorities. In between, as always, were desperate families facing a deadly desert.
Dora Rodriguez was driving the volunteer truck of the Tucson and Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans along the border wall to identify asylum seekers who needed help.
A white pick-up truck with about four vigilantes on board stopped the volunteers, accusing them of working for the cartels and of being traffickers. The vigilantes started tailing them and followed them for about 10 miles along the dirt road that runs parallel to the 30-metre wall, Dora told. «I got very scared when I realized what was happening».
«It is always the same story at every election: many promises are made to change and solve the migrant problem. Ma il fatto è che la migrazione non è un problema, gli Stati Uniti si fondano sugli immigrati, ma i politici usano questo tema per ottenere consensi. Every president makes promises that he does not keep, during Obama’s administration there were so many deportations and the separation of thousands of families, and even Joe Biden is proving to be the same as his predecessors».
«Crossing the border has become increasingly dangerous», Dora continues. «In 2020, people who emigrated were labelled as “terrorists” and the wall they had been building for years was also militarized. They installed surveillance cameras, control towers».
This strengthening of the borders killed a lot of people trying to cross, it’s like genocide, given the amount of people who lost their lives. Dal 2000 ad oggi sono più di 4000 le persone che ancora non sono state trovate, ma ci sono anche tantissime persone scomparse che nessuno cerca. It’s really cruel what is happening here and no one is working to find a solution».
It was thought that the abolition of Title 42, a law that Rodriguez describes as “a crime against humanity”, would bring greater equity in the treatment of migrants, instead it seems that the situation will only get worse.
Read also: Non è un paese per neri
