Crossing the lawless Darién Gap, a journey through the dangerous Panamanian jungle where South America ends and Central America begins takes at least 10 days on foot and is at best grueling, at worst lethal.
But it’s easier than being stuck at the US-Mexico border, people who were fortunate enough to avoid the fatal fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez last week declared.
“It’s because of immigration authorities, they’ve made our lives impossible,” Loidermar Barrios, 27, from Maracay, Venezuela, told the Guardian.
“My four-year-old daughter tells me, ‘Mom, I want to go back, I want to go back to the jungle,’” she added.
On Thursday morning, Barrios, her husband Edgar Naranjo, 27, and their two children arrived at the immigration processing center where a fire killed 39 migrants in Juárez, the large Mexican sister city of El Paso, Texas, just across the US border.
They wanted to find out if a family member who went missing was among the dead, so they could inform relatives back home.
“They don’t even send us back alive,” Naranjo said. “If he’s dead, getting his body to Venezuela will be very complicated.”
The deaths are being investigated as suspected homicides, said prosecutor Sara Irene Herrerías, accusing those in charge of doing nothing to evacuate the victims after flames engulfed a cell with migrants locked inside.
On Monday afternoon, immigration authorities raided intersections throughout the city, detaining migrants who were cleaning windshields and asking for money in the streets. Those detainees became the victims of the fire.
The 39 who died, according to a government list issued on Friday, were men from Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela and Honduras, the oldest being 51 the youngest 18, most in their 20s.
“The mayor had been sending xenophobic messages to the migrant population,” Naranjo said. “His rhetoric prompted these raids. He is responsible.”
Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, mayor of Ciudad Juárez, criticized protesting migrants who temporarily interrupted the flow of traffic last month at the Paso del Norte International Bridge that leads to the US, saying: “It’s crucial that we put an end to it. They could impact the city’s economy … our patience is running low.”
The mayor denied responsibility for the fire during an interview with the press on Tuesday, insisting what happened in the streets had nothing to do with what happened at the center.
“Anyone making any type of connection is seeking political benefit from a tragedy,” Pérez Cuéllar said.
The authorities are commonly accused of xenophobia by migrants waiting in Mexico to apply for asylum in the US, and of abuse including unjustified arrests, kidnapping, robbery and rape.
“If you have a legal permit to stay in the country, they tear it up in your face and steal your money,” said Oscar Hernández, 63, from Aragua state in Venezuela. “We’ve not only become a business for police, but also for hotels, criminal groups and even shelters.”
According to Hernández, immigrants have been taking to the streets to sleep and ask for money in Juárez because they don’t have other options. He’s been looking for a job for months, but says his age has hindered him.
And shelters, some struggling to cope, are operating more like hotels, he said, charging daily fees to sleep on the floor and have access to dirty bathrooms.
“Fifty pesos to sleep, 30 pesos to shower and five pesos to use the restroom. They’re not helping us, they’re ripping us off,” Hernández said.
Josefina Cedeño, 40, from Caracas, Venezuela, agreed that living conditions in shelters were very poor and even dangerous. Food from shelters often makes her sick.
“I’m sleeping under a bench with some cardboard underneath me. I’m better here [than at a shelter] until I get my appointment,” Cedeño said.
Remaining at the border in Mexico for weeks or even months while waiting for an appointment with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is not what Barrios and her family expected when they first left Venezuela last year.
“The majority of migrants are Venezuelans, because the US said they would welcome us,” Barrios said. “But now we’re here and they closed their border to us.”
The Biden administration offered a legal path to the US for 24,000 Venezuelan asylum seekers fleeing economic collapse in their own country, but only to those arriving in the US by plane, backed by a US sponsor and fulfilling other stringent conditions. Others are stuck at the border.
Under Title 42, the public health rule imposed by Donald Trump when the coronavirus pandemic broke out and continuing during the Biden administration – but now set to be dropped on 11 May – most migrants reaching the border on foot are blocked from entering the US upon arrival to seek asylum, or summarily expelled if they cross informally and turn themselves in.
“CBP: blood is on your hands too,” reads a white banner taped to the metal fence outside the processing center where the fire occurred.
CBP is currently relying on its new app, CBP One, for people to apply for asylum appointments, but very few slots are released every day, leaving families unable to schedule appointments together and forcing some to separate.
Ana de Dios Pavón de Calles, 13, from San Cristóbal, Venezuela, is in limbo in Juárez with her sister and father, hoping to reunite with her mother, who reached El Paso after managing to schedule one individual appointment with CBP two weeks ago. The family had tried repeatedly to use the app to make an appointment as a family but, as many have been finding out, they were unable to do so.
The night of the fire, her mom called her 13 times to make sure the family was OK.
“What I need the most right now is my mom,” Pavón de Calles said.
Her father, Juan Pavón, 55, is camping outside the processing center with dozens of others demanding resolution from the Mexican and US governments.
“Pressure is rising, because despair is rising,” Pavón said. “A movement is being created.”