Some asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico help each other

A small group of asylum seekers sits under a canopy on the side of a road leading into the United States, chatting to pass the time as a blazing desert sun pushes the heat into triple digits and fumes roll in from dozens of cars lined up to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Coming from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba and many other countries, they’re waiting in San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico, to seek asylum at the official border crossing just south of San Luis, Arizona.

Under the canopy, surrounded by little but fencing and some stores and restaurants, they look like old friends. They have banded together around their small fold-up table, where they spend hours waiting.

They assign people with children to early morning shifts when the heat isn’t as bad. A daily “colecta” — a collection of cash — pays for water and snacks for those guarding the table.

“Here, you have nobody but each other,” Julio Montenegro, a 33-year-old Guatemalan who has been waiting for several weeks, said on a hot afternoon in late June.

Despite their bond, this group has just met. They’re among roughly 950 people on the waitlist in San Luis Río Colorado that’s moving slowly — only a few people each day get called for the chance to start a new life, and there are days when none do.

President Donald Trump’s administration forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexican cities before they can start the asylum process, a policy referred to as “metering.”

As a result, thousands of people along the Mexican border don’t get an interview with an asylum officer for months and face danger even after fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries.

For the few who get an interview, the U.S. government still forces many to wait in Mexico while their immigration cases wind through court, which can take years.

The fate of those seeking asylum at the southern border is uncertain after the Trump administration this week said it was banning migrants from seeking U.S. protections if they pass through another country first. The rules have been challenged in court.

Metering and other policies that make it hard to seek asylum have led some migrants to cross the border illegally out of desperation, including Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his young daughter, Valeria, who was seen in a widely shared photo last month after drowning in the Rio Grande.