While illegal crossings drop along U.S. border, migrants in Mexico grow desperate

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico — Desperate and exhausted, the migrants gathered around a tree that offered them some shade from the relentless sun.

They had traveled from countries in Latin America, such as Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru and Venezuela. Some of them were parents traveling with small children, including toddlers. Others were young men. Some of the teenagers appeared to be unaccompanied minors traveling without their parents.

All of them shared a common goal: to enter the USA, which was just a few meters away. But standing in their way were miles of razor wire and other barriers erected by the state of Texas under Gov. Greg Abbott to deter migrants from crossing into the United States illegally.

“They're trying to kill us,” one of the migrant men said in Spanish, showing CBS News cameras how sharp the cable could be.

Some said they had tried to overcome the barriers several times without success. At one point, the migrants huddled around the cameras to describe the austere conditions of the makeshift camp they had set up near the U.S. border with tents and blankets.

They said they had been sleeping near that tree for days, some up to two weeks, fighting the elements for a chance to enter the U.S. “We don't have food. We don't have water,” a Venezuelan woman carrying a little boy said in Spanish.

Rene, a migrant from Honduras, said he had been sleeping outside for 15 days, after traveling to Mexico with his young daughters, ages 3 and 9. He pointed to an area full of brush where they slept, using blankets to protect themselves from the cold temperatures at night and in the morning.

“I don't sleep all night,” Rene said in Spanish, noting that he closes his eyes only intermittently to make sure his daughters are okay.

Illegal steps fall

Illegal crossings along the southern U.S. border are down more than 40 percent this year since soaring to record levels in December. In April, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded roughly 129,000 illegal crossings, the second straight monthly decline, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News. The pattern has defied historical trends: migration usually increases in the spring.

Still, tens of thousands of migrants are estimated to be waiting in Mexico, in places like Ciudad Juárez where reception space is limited and conditions are sometimes dire.

Many in Mexico are waiting to get an appointment to enter the US at an official port of entry through a Biden administration program powered by a smartphone app known as CBP One. But the process is limited to 1,500 sites each day. And the demand in Mexico is much higher.

Faced with waiting times that often stretch for months, some migrants, like those in the makeshift camp, become desperate and decide to try to cross into the United States illegally. But first they must clear Texas barriers to surrender to federal Border Patrol agents, the first step in the years-long asylum process.

Karina Breceda, who oversees migrant shelters in Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, called the barricades set up by Texas “inhumane,” noting that she has helped some migrants, including children, who were cut by the razor.

“The United States is the greatest country in the world,” Breceda said. “We are able to have, I think, a policy that treats this situation with dignity.”

But on the U.S. side of the border, Texas Department of Public Safety Sergeant Eliot Torres said the wire is supposed to serve as a “warning signal” to migrants not to enter the United States between official ports of entry, which is a federal crime. Texas has also tried to make the act a state crime through a law known as SB4, but federal courts have measure blocked at the request of the Biden administration.

“The inhuman part is in the… optics, right?” Torres said near a stretch of the border near El Paso that Texas has been fortified with additional wire and fencing. “That's what people perceive it to be.”

Torres acknowledged that migrants could be cut off by the cable. Asked if that is part of the deterrence goal, he said: “Yes.” But Torres noted that Texas officials provide medical aid to migrants who are injured or in distress.

“We're here protecting our border, but we're also not going to … just let somebody stay there, get hurt,” Torres said.

Abbott and other Texas officials have credited their actions, from razor wire to arresting migrants on charges of entering the state, for the marked decline in migrant crossings in recent months, which has been more acute in the Lone Star State than in Arizona and California. .

But federal officials believe the main catalyst is an aggressive crackdown on U.S.-bound migrants by Mexican officials, who have stepped up efforts to prevent migrants from boarding trains and buses that take them closer to the U.S. border. They are also deporting some migrants to southern Mexico.

Still, some migrants like Rene have made it to northern Mexico despite the crackdown and are willing to wait indefinitely for a chance to come to the United States.

“We came for the American dream,” he said.