(Jacumba) No water, no food, no care: for several months in California, migrants who manage to cross the border with Mexico have been piling up in camps in the middle of the desert, where they endure deplorable conditions denounced by associations.
Activists denounce the existence of these “open-air detention camps”, supervised by the border police, where candidates for exile must wait for days for their cases to be taken care of by the immigration services.
“The border police told us that this was the new norm,” Erika Pinheiro, director of the NGO Al Otro Lado, told AFP in front of a camp located in the border town of Jacumba.
According to her, seven such camps have been formed since September in California.
PHOTO VALERIE MACON, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Those in Jacumba house 800 people daily, held there by the police while waiting for a place to become available in a treatment center.
“They are warned that if they leave these camps, they will be expelled,” she explains. “But the border police are not providing them with food, water, shelter or medical assistance. »
With other associations, Al Otro Lado tries to fill these gaps by providing basic necessities and care.
Hostile desert
Heat during the day, temperatures below zero at night: this desert infested with snakes and scorpions is a hostile environment.
Migrants arriving here pass through a hole formed in a mountain along the border wall.
The health conditions they face are deplorable. The wasteland has only two shabby toilets, adults and children sleep in damaged tents and warm themselves as best they can with makeshift fires, which they fuel with branches gleaned here and there, AFP noted.
PHOTO VALERIE MACON, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Chinese migrant sits outside his tent near the Mexican border in Jacumba, California.
Many of them are forced to spend several nights there. Border police officers provide them with colored bracelets, which indicate their day of arrival and serve to identify who should leave first.
A 13-year-old boy died in the camp last weekend. Associations believe it was an accident and fear other tragedies.
Because since May, the vast majority of migrants must make their asylum request via the CBP One application. Its use has created a bottleneck at the border: obtaining an appointment can take months, according to associations, which denounce its systematization.
“The application is only available in English, Spanish and Creole,” regrets Mme Pinheiro, pointing out all the migrants incapable of understanding these languages.
In Jacumba, the majority of candidates for exile are Chinese or Turks. The others come from Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Colombia, Ecuador and even Peru.
Among them, Jimmy – who uses a pseudonym for fear of reprisals against his family – crossed ten countries in 35 days to flee China. A journey that cost him $12,000.
“The situation is not good in China, I don’t want to live there,” he confided to AFP.
Presidential election
Immigration should be the subject of a tough political confrontation during the 2024 presidential election, where Joe Biden has every chance of facing Donald Trump again.
The Democratic president is regularly accused of laxity by the Republican opposition. And his predecessor, who spent billions to build the border wall, now promises to use the army to close it if he returns to power.
A flammable context unfavorable to the profound and complex reforms of the immigration system recommended by experts.
Faced with the extreme polarization of the country on this subject, Mme Pinheiro ended up becoming suspicious.
“The border police, and in particular their union, are a very pro-Trump partisan political organization,” she believes. According to her, “they are trying to show that the border is out of control. »
When contacted by AFP, the administration did not respond, nor did the union bringing together its agents.
But on the ground, certain civil servants denounce on condition of anonymity their lack of resources.
“We do what we can, but we are overwhelmed,” confides an agent as night falls on Jacumba.
Migrants continue to arrive no matter what.
Eight months pregnant, Carla Morocho fled Ecuador, with the hope that her child would be born in a less violent and more prosperous country.
“I don’t want him to suffer like me,” she whispers, huddled around a campfire with her husband. For her, as for the other members of the camp, there is no going back.
“I know I’m going to suffer a little more,” she explains. “But I know it’s worth it.” »