have been expelled<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe order, ironically, has fueled a spike in migrants trying to sneak into the United States. Being dropped off at the border station, rather than deported and flown back to their home countries, creates an easy opportunity to try again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along the perilous migrant corridor in Arizona, where temperatures dipped to 27 degrees last weekend, Border Patrol agents responded to 10 separate 911 calls from migrants, rescuing more than two dozen men, women and children, including three toddlers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBefore, everybody was just turning themselves in,\u201d said John Mennell, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Arizona. \u201cNow they are back to running and hiding. Those are the people who are going to get lost. Smugglers abandon them; they lose cellphone coverage and they run until they can\u2019t anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The medical examiner for Pima County, which covers the most treacherous expanse, has recovered the bodies of 216 migrants so far this year, the highest number in a decade and the second-highest since records have been kept starting in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gregory Hess, the chief medical examiner and forensic pathologist, said many of the regions where people cross are unforgiving. \u201cIf something goes wrong and you run out of water, food or whatever, it\u2019s not like you can live off the environment. There is not a river that is flowing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During six nights in the desert, Mr. Mena and his travel companion, Diego Palux, curled up in dry arroyos to sleep, which helped to protect them from the frigid wind that whipped up the earth and debris around them, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had borrowed money to hire coyotes, smugglers who charge as much as $15,000 to guide migrants through the rugged terrain and rocky mountains, to reach the United States. But they had lost their way in the cactus-dotted expanse that stretched to the horizon. By the time agents found them, they had no food or water in their camouflage backpacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But within two hours, they were back in Mexico, among about 100 migrants who had been apprehended near Sasabe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Guatemala, the peasants had struggled to provide for their children cutting sugar cane. Mr. Palux had made it to Mississippi in 2018, where he worked at a poultry plant until he was deported last year. Mr. Mena had spent six months in a detention center near Phoenix after being caught at the border the same year.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDora Rodriguez, who works with a group called Tucson Samaritans,\u00a0\u00a0prepares food to be distributed to migrants at the border.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThey sat on a bench beside another Guatemalan, Samuel Alexander, 28, who rested his swollen, blistery right foot on his shoe. Thugs in his village had threatened to kill his family unless he paid them \u201ccommission\u201d to keep operating a little eatery, he said. To spare their lives, he had closed the business and headed north, holding the unrealistic hope that, if captured, border agents would let him into the United States after hearing his story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe officers didn\u2019t care,\u201d he said, weeping. \u201cThey told me I can\u2019t ask for asylum because of the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The migrants devoured chicken sandwiches, fruit cups and cereal bars offered by two American volunteers. Dora Rodriguez, who works with a group called Tucson Samaritans, draped blank-and-white blankets on their shoulders and did not resist when Mr. Alexander reached out to hug her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe numbers we are seeing here don\u2019t compare to normal times because of the pandemic, and we have been hearing from more migrants displaced by the hurricanes\u201d said Ms. Rodriguez, who runs a humanitarian nonprofit called Salvavision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn people\u2019s mind, they believe that a new administration will open the borders and give them an opportunity to stay,” said Ms. Rodriguez. \u201cWe are expecting a large number of people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sasabe, a poor town of rutted, dirt roads and dilapidated adobe structures, has flourished anew as a major staging place for coyotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brand-new SUVs with tinted windows roared down the roads on a recent afternoon, out of place in the forlorn town where there was barely a person outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to canned tuna, beans and sodas, the only grocery store on the main road, aptly named \u201cSuper Coyote,\u201d stocked camouflage shirts and trousers, backpacks and slippers as well as black water jugs for migrants facing long treks in the desert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every hour, it seemed, another Border Patrol van pulled up at the port of entry to expel more migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Out of one vehicle emerged a slight boy in a red Nike T-shirt, scrapes on his forehead and cheeks, who looked no older than 15. The young man, Francisco Velasquez, said he hoped to make it as far as Florida to work in construction to send money to his family. \u201cHurricane Eta took my house,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have nothing left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miriam Jordan is a national correspondent whose narratives pull back the curtain on the complexities and paradoxes of immigration policies and their impact on immigrants, communities and the economy. Before joining the Times, she covered immigration for more than a decade at the Wall Street Journal and was a correspondent in Brazil, Israel, Hong Kong and India.\u00a0@mirjordan<\/a><\/p>\n\nThis post was originally published on Salvavision<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The president-elect has promised a more humane border policy. But devastated economies and natural disasters in Latin America have fueled a spike in migration that could make pledges hard to keep. By\u00a0Miriam Jordan New York Times Dec. 13, 2020 Leer en espa\u00f1ol SASABE, Ariz. \u2014 By the time the Border Patrol spotted the two migrants [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15318"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":763227,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions\/763227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}