Migrants face violence as US makes them wait in Mexico
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Roberto Escalona Moreno says he witnessed a double murder on the street last week near the hostel where is staying. The Cuban immigrant has been assaulted, and his friends have been shaken down by police, he says.
Moreno, 22, is among more than 30,000 migrants who are pressing for asylum in the U.S. but are stuck in Mexico's drug- and gang-infested border cities under Trump administration policies intended to stem the flow. They say the months of waiting are increasingly putting them in harm's way.
"It's not safe here," Moreno said, less than an hour after witnessing the deadly shooting in Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Cartel violence in Juarez is down from its height five years ago, but it is still one of the most dangerous cities in the world, with gangs vying for control of drug trafficking routes.
Juarez, with a population of 1.4 million, recorded 1,259 homicides in 2018, or more than four times the death toll in New York City, which has six times as many people. Other border cities, such as Tijuana, are murderous places as well.
Last week, a man was gunned down in Juarez at his child's preschool graduation, and an unrelated 4-year-old girl died in the attack, according to local reports. Federal police recently freed three kidnapping victims, including a Honduran migrant, from a home filled with alleged gang members.
People hoping to enter the U.S. are forced to wait south of the border because of twin U.S. policies — one sharply limiting the number of asylum applications per day that border stations accept, the other requiring many of those who have applied to bide their time in Mexico while their cases make their way through the legal system.
The U.S. government is expanding the remain-in-Mexico policy to...