A migrant family is undeterred by Biden’s push to restrict asylum

Arelis R. Hernández | The Washington Post


CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico - Ingrid Orasma had spent weeks trekking through Mexico by foot, train and bus with her two young sons. She reached the border Tuesday only to find out the man she calls “Papa Biden” had imposed new restrictions on how many asylum seekers like her are allowed to stay in the United States.

The thought of remaining a day longer in Mexico was unbearable. Along the journey, she said, Mexican authorities had robbed the group of friends her family was traveling with, pulled them off trains and abandoned them in the desert. She feared what getting stuck south of the U.S. border might bring next.

“To Mexican immigration officials, we are animals,” Orasma, 47, said. “It’s been abuse and mistreatment at every step.”

So on Wednesday, as President Biden’s new asylum policy went into effect, the Venezuelan woman and her family headed to the border, hoping immigration officials might still let them in. They waited to board a bus toward the border wall. And they prayed.

Deemed ineligible

The stakes were high: Migrants deemed ineligible for protection will be returned to their home countries or Mexico unless they express a convincing fear of harm that qualifies them for an exemption under tougher screening procedures.

Orasma had a long list of complaints about life in Venezuela. But it was unclear if any of them would be enough to convince an immigration officer that they should get to stay.

“What options do I have?” she asked, caressing her 10-year-old son as they took shelter from the blistering heat under the shade of a tree. Sweat glistened on her forehead. The only thing left to do, she decided, was to try to cross and “leave it to God.”

In Venezuela, their life felt like a steady spiral downward.

There was the government that permitted little dissent. The blackouts that made running any kind of business a losing prospect. The fear that came with expressing a contrarian viewpoint. Her salary as a schoolteacher was hardly sufficient to raise two children on her own.

Friends had made it to the United States. And cousins in New Jersey had offered them a place to stay. Why shouldn’t they leave, too?

Two months ago, they packed their bags and set off on a quest to reach the United States. They traveled first toward Central America and reached Mexico without any major complications. But as soon as they reached the last country on their journey, their troubles began.


There were long nights where the only place they could find or afford to sleep was the floor of a plaza or outside a gas station. During one 20-day stretch, no one offered them a ride and they had no money for a bus, so they walked. Her two children - the eldest of which is 15 - developed painful blisters on their feet.

As the trek to Mexico’s northern border stretched on, her sons had grown steadily skinnier.

They were defenseless

But nothing, she said, shocked her quite as much as the treatment they experienced at the hands of Mexican authorities. The group of friends they made along the way tried to protect one another, but often, they were defenseless. When they managed to get on a train recently, officials found them and forced them off, she said, leaving them in a desert.

The only way they’d managed to find their way out was by following the faint glow of lights from a town on the horizon.

All along, she’d predicted, U.S. immigration officials would let them in. The Biden administration had repeatedly shown generosity toward Venezuelan migrants. A new parole program permitted several thousand to enter the country each month, though they’d need to apply from Venezuela. Still, thousands of others had had success making long trips through Central America and Mexico and surrendering to officials at the border.

She figured her family would be treated the same. But when they finally reached Ciudad Juárez on Tuesday, news began trickling in about Biden’s new policy. U.S. immigration officials would start sending migrants back.

The next day, Orasma and her friends gathered under a tree in the city’s downtown, trying to find news stories and social media posts that might offer them some hint of what to do next. The new policy blocking migrants’ access to the U.S. asylum system when illegal border crossings are at emergency levels had gone into effect, and officials were already starting to enforce it.

Orasma said she tried to make an appointment with an immigration officer through the Biden administration’s CBP One app. But there aren’t enough slots to meet demand.

From her perspective, there was just one option.

‘Open the door’

“We want Papa Biden to open the door,” she said.

Over the last two months, the group of Venezuelans, Mexicans and Hondurans Orasma and her sons were traveling with had built an indestructible bond. They affectionately referred to one another by nicknames. Orasma was known as “Mama.”

Their plan: Take a bus somewhere close to a stretch of the Rio Grande that other migrants had told them was near a border gate where they could easily surrender to officials on U.S. soil.

At this point in their journey, they were running out of money. Bus drivers across northern Mexico were barring immigrants from boarding to avoid trouble with authorities.

They stood at a bus stop and waited.

A driver stopped and opened his door. But when they explained where they were going, he shook his head and drove away. Twenty minutes passed. No one would take them.

“Just the thought of coming back to Mexico,” Marco Morales, 46, a teacher from Venezuela traveling with the group, said. He paused for a moment. “It makes me want to cry.”

Then came a refurbished school bus painted green. The driver stopped and agreed to allow them on for 40 pesos each - a little more than two dollars. They would try to get to “La X,” a giant sculpture in the form of an X near the border wall that migrants use as a landmark to indicate they are close to Gate 36.

Got off at the wrong stop

The bus driver was surprisingly kind, calling the group to board again after they initially got off at the wrong stop.

“If you get off here you’ll have to walk too far,” he said.

“And there’s no police there, right?” Morales asked.

The driver said there was no one there last time he’d checked.

They boarded again, spreading themselves across the bus between Mexicans heading home from work and others dozing off in the 100-degree heat. The children couldn’t help but fall asleep as the bus rolled eastward. Songs from the band Queen blared over the radio.

“Los del 36!” the driver suddenly yelled, snapping them awake. They stood up and grabbed their bags of water bottles and small backpacks, their only remaining belongings. No one knew which direction led to the border but they figured heading north would take them there.

The group navigated their way through traffic-filled highways, dodging angry drivers who honked their horns. They passed giant fenced-in factories for foreign manufacturers. When they reached a carwash, a worker yelled out to them to stop.

Orasma felt her heart stop. The group froze, confused.

The man ran inside a nearby fast-food restaurant, grabbed a bag and handed it to them. There were burritos inside, spicy ones. They hadn’t eaten much at all that day. Orasma’s boys thanked the man with a smile.

When they finally reached the river, a levee blocked their view. A man known as Flaco because of his tall and skinny frame approached. He craned his neck and peered over the top.

“It’s clear!” he yelled, barely audible over the traffic. “Vamanos!”


No troops in sight

They walked, ran and skipped toward the edge of the Rio Grande, no Mexican federal troops in sight. The river had been reduced to a mere creek by the hot weather and drought.

A Texas National Guard Humvee purred across the water alongside a state trooper’s black and white SUV. Rows of razor wire lined the river on the other side. The dry river silt they were leaning against as they hid in the nearby brush was so hot it burned their backs if they stayed still for too long.

Orasma wasn’t sure what to do next. She was a mother with children. Would border agents really turn them back?

Her 15-year-old son took out his phone and shot a video zooming through the tree leaves toward the rust-colored panels of border wall. He uploaded it on WhatsApp to share with friends and family.

At the bottom of the image he captioned it: “Todo con el favor de Dios.”

“May we have God’s blessing.”

Then he took a photograph of himself. He was straight-faced and tired. But he gave a thumbs-up. He typed in two prayer emojis and an image of the United States flag. The border was in sight. They would try.