Mexican households get fast reunions with migrant kin

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Tears flowed amid heartfelt embraces as Mexican households had been allowed temporary reunions on the border Saturday with kin who migrated to the United States.

As a mariachi band performed the favored track “Las Mañanitas,” about 150 households handed over the Rio Grande to fulfill with family members they’d not seen for years.

Margarita Piña couldn’t cover her emotion as she waited to greet her son, whom she hadn’t seen since he left house two years in the past in the midst of the pandemic to hunt a greater future within the U.S.

“It’s very hard because we don’t know what they’re suffering over there,” Piña stated.

Knowing their assembly can be restricted to solely 5 minutes, Piña stated she would make the most of the restricted time to inform him “that we still love you very much.”

It was the tenth version of the “Hugs, not walls” occasion, which was organized by humanitarian teams close to the Casa de Adobe Museum within the border metropolis of Ciudad Juárez, which sprawls throughout the border from El Paso, Texas.

Unlike at earlier reunions, a robust guard of U.S. officers was current on the occasion, which got here simply days earlier than Washington will elevate Title 42 asylum guidelines imposed for the pandemic that allowed the U.S. to expel greater than 2.8 million migrants since March 2020.

The finish to the availability Thursday is anticipated to encourage a surge of migrants towards the border, and U.S. authorities have beefed up safety, together with stringing barbed wire fencing. The authorities has stated 1,500 troops will probably be despatched to El Paso, along with 2,500 National Guardsmen already on the border.

“We have never had a border as militarized as today,” stated Fernando García, head of the Network in Defense of the Rights of Migrants.