Migrants in Mexico despair; U.S. extends pandemic asylum limits

24/5/2022 11:47

        Migrants across northern Mexico voiced frustration and desperation on Monday, after the U.S. government failed to lift a pandemic-era policy that has largely
        prevented them from seeking asylum in the United States for over two years.
        
        An eleventh-hour decision by a federal judge in Louisiana on Friday made it impossible for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to end by Monday the sweeping policy known as Title 42. Since March 2020, Title 42 has empowered U.S. agents to quickly turn back over a million migrants to Mexico and other countries.
        
        "Here in Mexico, we don't have anything to eat, we have to go out to the streets to beg, so it's terrible for us that they've extended (Title 42)," said Honduran migrant Maria Sanchez, who said she has spent more than a year in Mexico with her children.
        
        Sanchez was among over a hundred migrants lined up in sweltering heat outside the Senda de Vida shelter in Reynosa, across from McCallen, Texas. Thousands more were already camped inside the facility's grounds.