200 asylum seekers in line outside Nogales port of entry days after Title 42's end
NOGALES, Sonora — About 200 migrants were lined up outside of the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry Wednesday as they waited for their opportunity to seek asylum without a mobile app appointment.
Many of the asylum seekers had waited in line for days, enduring the scorching sun and the frigid nights. People who arrived Tuesday morning hadn’t moved from their place in line yet.
Many migrants were from the Mexican state of Guerrero. Others were from Guatemala and Haiti.
Some hadn’t eaten for hours or days. Many were rationing how much water they drank because they couldn’t afford to repeatedly use the only available bathrooms, which cost 10 Mexican pesos, or roughly 57 cents.
Without scheduling an appointment through the glitchy and troubled CBP One mobile application, asylum seekers are relegated to wait for days at a time until a port officer can process them. Priority is given to asylum seekers who have a pre-scheduled appointments.
Many of the people in line have been trying to book an appointment for months, to no avail. After the lifting of Title 42 on May 11, many decided to try to wait at the port without an appointment, as is their legal right.
“They're exercising their right to wait in line in the middle of the night on cold, hard ground in the heat of the day, without food security, sometimes without water, because that's how bad and dysfunctional this app is,” said Chelsea Sachau, managing attorney of the Border Action Team at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.
Despite the number of people, the line was orderly and calm. Pedestrians casually walked by as they made their way into the U.S.
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The first people began to wait in line over the weekend, with some showing up Saturday and numerous others on Sunday.
A few dozen people inside the port’s metal turnstile lined the walls as they sat and slept on the ground, surrounded by their luggage and blankets. The line stretched out of the metal entry and into the nearby sidewalk, snaking all the way to the main vehicle thoroughfare to enter the U.S.
Fernando Perez and his family had been waiting in Nogales for eight months for their chance to seek asylum in the U.S.
The family now gathered outside of the port of entry. Some sat on the metal bench, while others nestled themselves in a concrete nook of the sidewalk.
Perez, a truck driver in Guerrero, Mexico, had his truck stolen by cartel members after they kidnapped him for ransom. When the family opened a small restaurant, they had to pay a quota to the criminal outfit to assure their protection.
When cartel members threatened to take his children away, Perez decided it was time to flee his home.
'We don't matter': Title 42 ends but migrants see little hope in new system
The family arrived in the border community and attempted to request an exemption from Title 42 with the help of a lawyer but had no luck. Perez has been trying to book a CBP One appointment every day for more than three months, often waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning to begin the application process.
No luck.
“You go crazy,” Perez said about the complicated monthslong effort to receive a CBP One appointment.
Volunteers from the Kino Border Initiative migrant shelter helped hand out plastic foam plates filled with beans, potatoes and tortillas. The number of people staying at the shelter was significantly down as the majority of recent migrants went directly to the port of entry.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Migrants wait for days to seek asylum outside Nogales port of entry
