To prepare the steaming vat of caldo de pollo, someone has to tend the fire. Another person must deal with the wind that kicks up the dirt and garbage. And still others run to the grocery store, chop the vegetables, and haul drinking water from the communal cistern. Here at the tent camp under the Gateway International Bridge, which connects Matamoros, Mexico, with Brownsville, Texas, everything is made fresh out of necessity. There is no pantry, no refrigerator. People must cook and eat as they live: in the open air, with more than 2,000 other asylum seekers, on a levee perched on the southern banks of the Rio Grande River.

The aroma of chicken broth soon fills the air, a ribbon of goodness twisting its way through the stench of trash and car fumes and feces. Jose, who came here from Nicaragua, is in charge of the fire. Marisela, from El Salvador, loses her footing and nearly slides down the slope while carrying buckets of water with Melissa and Areli, who coordinate the makeshift restaurant operation and are both from Honduras. The simple lean-to that they use as a kitchen was a gift from a Honduran couple who gave up hope and left. Like everyone else at the camp, Marisela, Jose, Melissa, and Areli are waiting for their asylum cases to be decided just a few yards away in the U.S.

From left, Edgardo Rios, 7, his dad Jorge Rios, and his mother Kenia Villeda, all from Honduras, at the tent camp in Matamoros. Photo by Verónica G. Cárdenas

At the largest tent camp along the U.S.-Mexico border, cooking is a means of survival—not just for the body, but for the mind and soul. Cooking is caring for families, a means to earn money by selling meals to other migrants, an expression of human dignity to sustain spirits while living through a brutal humanitarian crisis that worsens by the day.

Until January 2019 asylum seekers were permitted to enter the U.S., with most eligible to work, while their cases were reviewed. But a new policy imposed by the Trump administration, known as "Remain in Mexico" or the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), changed everything. Now people seeking asylum under U.S. and international law are sent to Mexico—far from attorneys and families—while their cases are processed, which could take years. This camp, as with other similar migrant camps across the U.S.-Mexico border, is where many of them end up.

And yet, Melissa says, “we have nothing of protection.”

When I meet her in December, she’s wearing pink sweatpants and neatly tied braids. She arrived here as an asylum seeker from Honduras eight months prior, in May 2019, joining hundreds of other people waiting to submit their initial asylum claims. After she passed the first phase, the credible fear interview, she waited here, trying, as she says, “to do everything right” and make her case for asylum. But her odds are slim. In the year since MPP went into effect, only 11 people have been granted asylum, while some 60,000 have been sent away, according to December 2019 reports. The admission rate hovers around 0.1 percent, though outcomes differ widely depending on factors like the state where asylum seekers’ cases are heard or whether they have legal representation—which is exceedingly difficult to obtain.