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 course of the pandemic to hunt a greater future within the U.S.
“It’s very laborious as a result of we don’t know what they’re struggling over there,” Piña mentioned.
Realizing their assembly can be restricted to solely 5 minutes, Piña mentioned she would make the most of the restricted time to inform him “that we nonetheless love you very a lot.”
It was the 10th version of the “Hugs, not partitions” 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.
In contrast to at earlier reunions, a powerful 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.eight million migrants since March 2020.
The top to the supply Thursday is predicted to encourage a surge of migrants towards the border, and U.S. authorities have beefed up safety, together with stringing barbed wire fencing. The federal government has mentioned 1,500 troops will likely be despatched to El Paso, along with 2,500 Nationwide Guardsmen already on the border.
“We now have by no means had a border as militarized as right this moment,” mentioned Fernando García, head of the Community in Protection of the Rights of Migrants.
“There’s a battle towards migrants, refugees, towards us border crossers,” he added.