Freezing weather hits Matamoros migrant camp where asylum-seekers are days away from U.S. entry
‘We are frozen here,’ says a Honduran immigrant in a camp near the Rio Grande.
Scenes from the Matamoros camp of asylum-seekers shows rough conditions for those inside tents covered with tarps on Monday, Feb 15, 2021. Photos taken by asylum-seeker Rolando, who wanted his surname kept private.(Rolando)
About a thousand asylum-seekers in a tent camp in Matamoros near the Rio Grande spent a frigid and anxious Monday night in below freezing temperatures as a winter storm spread across Texas and northern Mexico.
“We are frozen here,” texted a Honduran man at the camp named Rolando who asked that his full name not be used because of the nature of his persecution claim in U.S. immigration courts. “There is so much cold in the camp of migrants.”
Asylum-seeking immigrants forced to remain in Mexico under a controversial Trump-era program will be processed for entry into Texas as soon as next Friday, setting off optimism and a scramble to safely welcome them among resettlement agencies.
Under the Biden administration initiative, as many as 300 people a day will be processed into the U.S., senior White House officials said. They had previously arrived in the U.S. to legally seek refuge before being forced to wait back in Mexico under the program called Migration Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico,
There are about 25,000 such cases pending in a program that enrolled a total of about 70,000. Mexican camps and shelters where most of them live while waiting to be summoned to the U.S. for their asylum hearings often lack adequate health care and medical supplies.