Tijuana (Mexico) (EFE).- The city of Tijuana, on the border between Mexico and California, has become the main irregular crossing of migrants into the United States this year, with an average of 1,250 daily, which specialists attribute to the increasing restrictions in Texas.
In the last week of April alone, data from the United States Border Patrol recorded more than 9,513 arrests of people who tried to cross into the Californian city of San Diego, while in other regions, such as Tucson, Arizona, they reported 7,600.
According to these data, on average there are around 1,250 daily crossings that occur through this border area, which on the Mexican side extends from Playas de Tijuana, where the border wall empties into the Pacific Ocean, to the Ejido Jacumé, in the municipality of Tecate.
The effect of criminalization of migrants in Texas
Judith Cabrera de la Rocha, co-director of the Border Line Crisis Center, assured EFE that this increase in crossings in this area has been evident, which she attributes to the “criminalizing and risk measures that governments such as Texas have implemented.”
Among them she cited “their deadly buoys” in the Rio Grande, which has caused injuries and deaths of migrants, “and detentions without any scruples.”
This has been boasted by the governor of Texas, Republican Gregg Abbott, who highlighted that this year was the March with the lowest number of detections of irregular migrants at the border since Joe Biden assumed the presidency of the United States in 2021. according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The reason it was the lowest March for migrant encounters is Texas. Illegal crossings were down 72% in Texas while up 24% in other border states. “We continue to build the border wall and razor wire barriers to reduce illegal immigration in Texas,” he said on the X network.
Cabrera de la Rocha expressed his concern that other states, such as California, take similar measures.
“We are already seeing that, through the CBP-One application (for migrants to request appointments in the US), there is very little mobility for Mexican nationals, because other nationalities are seen to receive their appointments faster, and What we are also seeing is that people are taking more and more desperate measures,” he commented.
Mexico stopped issuing and renewing visitor cards
The figures in Tijuana also reflect the record migratory flow in Mexico, where in the first quarter of 2024 alone, irregular migration intercepted by the Government grew by nearly 200% annually to almost 360,000.
Enrique Lucero Vázquez, municipal director of Migrant Assistance of Tijuana, told the media that “one of the factors that has also led to greater irregular crossings into the United States, which is still not being talked about much, is that Mexico has stopped issuing and renew a visitor card for humanitarian reasons.”
He added that “the delay of up to six months in appointments through the CBP-One application, coupled with the desperation and uncertainty that this generates among the migrant population, are also factors that have generated this increase in crossings in this region.”
The municipal official highlighted that, given these circumstances, added to the measures of the Texas Government to stop migration, they anticipate that on this side of the border the trend will continue for some time.
An aspect that was also agreed by Cabrera de la Rocha, who considered that possibly in the coming days or weeks many migrants will begin to arrive at the shelters and that they will become saturated again.
“It is something that we are more or less accustomed to and that leads us to redouble our efforts to raise funds, stock up on food and donations and various other things, so we have to be prepared for it,” he said.
Source: efe
