Migrants seeking asylum in the US gather at a makeshift encampment near the US border after the Supreme Court said Title 42 should be kept in place for now, in Matamoros, Mexico.
Hundreds of migrants bundled in coats and blankets formed a long line in cold winter air at the US-Mexico border, hoping the Christmas period will bring an end to uncertainty over their hopes of securing asylum in the United States.
“We don’t have a choice,” Francisco Palacios said in Spanish on Wednesday, explaining that his family arrived in Tijuana two weeks ago to escape violence and gangs that extorted them for years for a chunk of their income selling fruit from a street cart.
Many hoped entry would be easier after a December 21 deadline for the United States to lift Covid-era restrictions, but the US Supreme Court this week ruled to let the policy, called Title 42, temporarily stay in place.
Title 42 allows US authorities to send migrants of certain nationalities, including Venezuelans, back to Mexico without a chance to seek asylum.
The Biden administration asked the court to lift the restrictions, but not before Christmas. It's not clear when the court's decision will come.
Watching migrants trickle past gates into the United States, several Venezuelans lamented the last-minute move.
"We're waiting. Here they say one thing, then half an hour later they say something else," said Venezuelan Vanessa Revenga, 40, one of thousands of migrants to gather in recent weeks in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, opposite El Paso, Texas.
Immigration advocates have said the restrictions go against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the US to escape persecution and that the pretext is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve.
READ MORE: US city declares state of emergency over migrant influx from Mexico
Migrants can't celebrate Christmas
Christmas has made things even harder, said Venezuelan migrant Yessica Jerales, who was with her two children.
"There's December 24th, and you don't know where they're going to sleep," she said.
"They see the lights, and it's Christmas, and you have to explain that where we're going is to give them a better future."
Migrants in other border cities face a similar quandary.
Six weeks since he reached Matamoros, opposite Brownsville, Texas, Venezuelan Giovanny Castellanos was gearing up to spend Christmas in a tent away from his wife and five children.
Castellanos said on Wednesday that he saw 30 or 40 people cross the Rio Bravo river to turn themselves in to US agents.
"Lots of people are desperate, lots of people don't want to spend Christmas here," said Castellanos, 32.
Juan Antonio Sierra, who runs the city's largest migrant shelter, says Matamoros now has up to 8,000 migrants, many of them living in the border encampment or on the streets.
With temperatures forecast to chill further, he worries that those anxious to reach the United States will risk their lives crossing the river.
"It's dangerous because they can drown, because temperatures fluctuate," he said, "and it's going to get even colder."
Title 42 allows the government to expel asylum-seekers of all nationalities, but it’s disproportionately affected people from countries whose citizens Mexico has agreed to take: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently, Venezuela and Mexico.
READ MORE: Migrants pack Mexico-US border as Trump-era asylum curbs near end
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