A border wall, a ticking clock and a desperate decision: One migrant’s story at the Mexico-U.S. frontier

All-day long, Najib was making calls to friends. He was in search of what he considered potentially life-saving advice.

Should he jump the U.S.-Mexico border wall illegally — or wait?

As the clock ticked down Thursday toward the end of America’s so-called Title 42 law, Najib was among the migrants with everything on the line.

At 11:59 Thursday evening, the new rules would apply.

The 35-year-old Afghan had, like many of his countrymen and women in recent months, made a 10-country trek from Brazil, facing countless perils, including Panama’s jungle.

Now, he was waiting near the airport in Tijuana to join other Afghans — some still flying in from Mexico City — to make what would be a half-hour drive to Donald Trump’s infamous border wall.

“I am in contact with an Afghan family who just left the airport for the border,” he said, on the phone from Tijuana.

“If the family manages to jump the wall, he will let us know.”

Najib had travelled from Brazil three weeks ago, and reached the Mexican capital late Wednesday. He said he paid $420 (U.S.) for a flight from Mexico City to Tijuana, a price he said was doubled since the announcement of expiration of the law as hundreds of immigrants rushed to buy tickets.

“The airport check-in line was full of immigrants,” he said. “All bound for Tijuana.”

For him, and at least 10 other friends who made it to Mexico, there is the pressure of a tight deadline after being on the road for nearly three months. Surrounded by confusion and conflicting reports, he has heard that if he crosses the border the next day or after, he will be faced with deportation.

The Afghan family “will show us the route and the tricks,” he said.

But he has also heard about a new U.S. government app that could allow him to claim asylum.

Title 42, a U.S. health emergency law, was to expire at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

The law, brought in by then president Trump at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, has allowed the authorities to immediately send back immigrants who crossed the border illegally.

But with it set to expire — and fearing a humanitarian crisis at the prospect of record numbers of asylum seekers suddenly flooding into the States — the Biden administration has moved to change the rules, and in doing so has thrown migrants like Najib into a state of anxiety and confusion.

The Biden administration is putting in place a new mechanism for immigrants on the southern border with Mexico to apply for asylum.

Under Title 42, U.S. officials turned away migrants more than 2.8 million times. Families and children traveling alone were exempt, and could seek asylum, The Associated Press reports. But migrants were able to try to get in again and again.

Under the new rules, migrants caught crossing illegally will not be allowed to return for five years.

The Biden administration is now turning away anyone seeking asylum who didn’t first seek protection in a country they travelled through, or first applied online (with some exceptions). But another factor is that crowding at Border Patrol stations could mean temporary releases of some migrants.

“The Biden asylum ban essentially says you’re not eligible for asylum if you’ve transited through another country,” said Jill Marie Bussey, director for public policy at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

“Essentially, it would impact access to asylum for anyone who’s not using that application.”

For Afghans and others whose odyssey has brought them to the doorstep of America, the rule change has the potential to slam the door in their face.

Following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021, the U.S. and its allies helped evacuate thousands of their local partners, journalists, rights activists and vulnerable members of ethnic minorities. But many U.S. local allies and Afghan soldiers were left behind.

Persecuted by the Taliban, many were left with no option but to take advantage of Brazil’s humanitarian visa. They then risked kidnapping, drowning in the Caribbean Sea, and attacks by deadly snakes and crocodiles, and crossed 10 countries to get to safety in the U.S. and Canada.

“These Afghans are left with no choice, but to choose really dangerous path to safety into the United States,” said Mustafa Babak, executive director and co-founder of the Afghan-American Foundation, a non-profit advocating for Afghans in the U.S.

American immigration lawyers say that despite the need for protection for Afghans who fled the Taliban, they are considered not to be different from other migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Those Afghans rejected after screening at the border will not be deported back to Afghanistan, said Tejas Shah, a Chicago-based immigration lawyer. Under the safe-third-country rules, they would be sent back to the first country they settled in.

“I don’t believe that they would deport them to Afghanistan,” he said, referring to the U.S. authorities. “That individual would be more than likely deported back to Brazil, because that’s where they were settled and residing before they left to come to the United States.”

According to Shah, anyone who crosses the wall before the end of Thursday will be subjected to Title 42.

Beginning Friday, it would be the new rule — the “safe third country” transit rule. “I think it’s going to depend on whether or not the individual has been firmly resettled” (in a third country), he added. “If the belief is that they did, then they would probably be deported back to that country — back to Brazil.”

For Najib, who wants to go by one name because it may affect his asylum claim, and his 10 friends currently in Mexico, Thursday night’s darkness at the border was likely to be their last chance to jump the seven-metre-high U.S. wall.

Unlike other migrants, Najib said he was not willing to pay his money to smugglers to help him cross the wall illegally. He was trying to find out what he could from other families who had succeeded in getting across, and copy them.

What would happen as he tried to make it over the wall, he couldn’t say.

“We will jump the wall tonight anyway,” he said. “I don’t know what happens next to me.”

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