After hours of waiting, eight migrants were allowed to enter the US and lodge an asylum claim – but hundreds remain on the Mexican side of the border

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

As the migrants fled violence-racked homelands and travelled through Mexico towards the US, the fictions grew wilder.

They were would-be invaders. A dangerous horde bent on violating US law. Pawns of a liberal conspiracy. Living proof of the need to build a wall.

The caravan of asylum seekers from Central America kept heading north, too busy seeking food, shelter and safety to rebut the accusations by Donald Trump and his conservative allies.

When approximately 150 reached the border in recent days, however, they resolved to expose the latest fiction, the one designed to keep them out.

“We have reached capacity at the San Ysidro port of entry,” Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a branch of homeland security, said in a statement on Sunday. The agency lacked “sufficient space and resources” to process “persons travelling without appropriate entry documentation”.

The US, in other words, was not violating US and international law by refusing to process asylum seekers. It simply lacked the capacity.

Put another way: despite weeks of warning about the caravan’s approach, this gateway between Tijuana and San Diego, one of the world’s busiest border crossings, was suddenly unable to process any asylum claims.

“It’s a lie. They just don’t want us because we’re foreigners,” said Katarina Francisco, 23, a Salvadorean cradling her three-year-old daughter, Allison, against Monday evening’s chill. “Well, we’re staying for as long as it takes.”

Katarina Francisco, a Salvadorean asylum seeker, with her daughter Allison at Tijuana’s US border crossing. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Others agreed. “A gang threatened to cut my family into small pieces,” said Juan Carlos Vásquez, 15, also from El Salvador. “We’ll stay here until they let us pass.”

“They told us it’s full, that there’s no space,” said David López, a Honduran, shivering yards from the San Ysidro barrier. He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

His mother, Emilia Cruz, 44, said they would stay put, the US flag flapping overhead, to shame the unshamable. “The hardest thing is they look at us like we’re nothing.”

Lawyers and advocacy groups called the CBP claim a pretext to block people who were fleeing violence and persecution from using any of the 316 beds in the San Ysidro facility.



“This is biggest law enforcement agency in the US. It’s simply not credible,” said Nicole Ramos, a US lawyer who accompanied the caravan.

“We know that they’re lying,” said Tristan Call, a volunteer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, which organised the caravan.

Wendy Young, the head of Kids in Need of Defense, said: “It defies the imagination that we don’t have the resources to process that number of people. They’re trying to send a message to the people of Central America that there’s no point coming because we won’t let you in.”



Conditions at the makeshift camp in Tijuana were primitive – blankets and tarpaulin offered meagre comfort from cold, damp concrete – but the migrants preferred to stay out in the open, visible and vocal, to keep pressure on the US to hear asylum petitions.

On Monday night the gate to the US opened a crack: border officials allowed eight members of the caravan to enter and lodge an asylum claim – the start of a new, uncertain odyssey in US detention facilities.

The camp greeted the news with jubilation. People cheered and punched the air. It felt like victory.

On Tuesday reality bit anew: it was only eight out of 150, with no indication when the rest might follow.

A CBP statement suggested it will be a trickle. “The number of inadmissible individuals we are able to process in a day varies based on the complexity of the cases, resources available, medical needs, translation requirements, holding/detention space, overall port volume and enforcement actions.”

Laura Gault, a legal observer with Human Rights First who has accompanied the asylum seekers, suspected border officials will keep the numbers low. “I think this will be a very long, drawn-out process.”

Uncertainty is nothing new for caravan members. Many left homes in Honduras and El Salvador months ago and joined the caravan for safety and solidarity. Such treks are an Easter tradition.

Their numbers had swollen to more than a thousand when conservative US media outlets reported the “invasion”, prompting fury from Trump. He called the migrants “dangerous”, ordered national guard troops to the border and demanded funding for a wall. Touring a barrier construction project on Monday, the vice-president, Mike Pence, suggested leftwing activists were manipulating migrants. “They’re being exploited by open-border political activists.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest José, aged seven, from El Salvador, who is travelling with the caravan. Photograph: Edgard Garrido/Reuters

The ragged, exhausted group in Tijuana rejected all this. Most of the caravan’s members had dispersed, as planned, to seek new lives in Mexico, leaving mostly women and children to continue to the border to request asylum, a right under US and international law, wall or no wall.

The Trump administration could depict them as marauding lawbreakers, they said, but lack of capacity to process asylum claims was a fiction too far – one they would expose through dogged persistence.

The trickle that began on Monday is more than Trump would like. But the Central Americans can hardly cry victory.



Many will be detained and separated from relatives while asylum petitions are investigated – and probably rejected. More than three-quarters of asylum seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala between 2011 and 2016 lost their cases, according to Syracuse University, which analysed immigration court statistics.

“Their journey is far from over,” said Gault, the attorney. “A new country, a new language, possibly a long road of detention.”

Fr Pat Murphy, who organises a Catholic-run shelter in Tijuana, said the caravan gave asylum seekers false hope. “It sets people up for failure because they think everything will work out. If you get in you’ll probably still be deported. I don’t see this as a real effective way to help people escape violence and start a new life. ”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dennis Tomlinson, a US tourist, at the makeshift migrant camp in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Not everyone in Tijuana was sympathetic to that goal. “They need to be sent back home,” said Dennis Tomlinson, 60, a jewellery craftsman from San Diego, as he passed the migrants’ makeshift camp. The children looked cute but would end up “terrorising” the US by draining resources and undercutting American workers. “You have to stand up for your freedoms.”