Inside the border encampments where migrants await their chance to enter U.S.
Amna Nawaz:
No, waiting for them is tenuous and it is stressful. And it's often dangerous as well.
We crossed into the town of Matamoros, which is on the other side of the border from Brownsville here. And as soon as we crossed the bridge, we were greeted by a huge crowd of people who have basically been gathering at the foot of that bridge every single morning, trying to get answers to those questions.
There are some immigration groups. There are some refugee groups there. And, more importantly, there are some volunteer U.S. attorneys, immigration attorneys, who cross the bridge every day and try to get some of those migrants answers to their questions.
There's a lot of confusion about what exactly the rules are, in terms of who is allowed entry to the United States and, Geoff, most acutely, questions around this CBP One app. That's an app created by the Customs and Border Protection in which migrants are asked to make an appointment to then appear and make their case for asylum.
Those appointments are highly coveted. They are very limited. And supply doesn't nearly meet demand. We actually spoke to one gentleman named Carlos who's from Honduras. He took out his phone in frustration to show me how many times he's been logging on to the app, submitting his application, trying to do things the legal way, and he has yet to get an appointment.
He's been doing this every single day for the last three months. More — the people we talk to here basically say the longer that migrants are forced to wait, the more vulnerable they become. There are already rampant reports of extortion and kidnapping and sexual assault.
We spoke to one woman named Duglias (ph) from Venezuela. She's here with her two teenage daughters. She won't even take them to go sleep in the migrant camp nearby because she's so afraid that they will be assaulted. So, Geoff, every night for the last month, they have been here. They have been sleeping out in the open at the bus station.
And she has no idea when they will be allowed to make their case to U.S. officials — Geoff.
Source: PBS NewsHour
