On the first day of his repeat term as president of the United States, Donald Trump went about making good on his promises to make life hell for asylum seekers. Proclaiming a “national emergency” to pave the way for the deportation of millions, Trump also immediately cancelled the CBP One app that previously allowed undocumented people to apply for legal entry to the US by land from Mexico.
The cancellation reportedly leaves some 270,000 people from a wide array of nationalities stranded in Mexican territory, where many had been waiting almost a year in torturous limbo for CBP One appointments. This is to say nothing of the deadly odysseys that refuge seekers have long been forced to undertake prior to applying for said appointments – odysseys that have often entailed being continuously preyed upon by organised crime outfits and corrupt law enforcement officials alike, as well as navigating the notorious corpse-ridden Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.
Predictably, Trump’s “deportation blitz” – as some outlets have dubbed it – has been a boon for the Mexican underworld and extortion-happy security personnel. When I arrived a week after Trump’s inauguration in Ciudad Juarez in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, which lies just across the border from the city of El Paso, Texas, I was told by a Venezuelan asylum seeker that the price of being smuggled the short distance into the US had suddenly soared to $10,000 per person. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.