Violence, restriction of asylum, and deportation:
The Matamoros Migrant Camp
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"The Rise, Endurance, and Fall of Migrant Camps on the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Sociology of Border Violence”
Timeline
The Rise began in 2019 with the launching of The Migrant Protection Protocols. A policy through which certain foreigners who enter or seek to be admitted to the US may be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration procedures.
The Endurance process happened in 2020 with COVID-19 and Title 42. Due to the pandemic, all asylum hearings were suspended indefinitely, and migrants started being expelled under Title 42, which prevents people from applying for asylum altogether on the ground that they would pose a health risk.
In 2021, a few days after Biden's inauguration, the end of MPP was finally announced, and the definitive dismantling of the Matamoros camp began.
Regrettably, Title 42 was not eradicated, and families from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America continue to be expelled, but now through Reynosa, where a new camp was raised.
The humanitarian crisis at the border is part of a long process of racial discrimination based on the power of delimitation through exclusion and empowerment through inclusion (see Goldberg).
This situation is also part of a global sociopolitical phenomenon intimately linked to a state of exception (as defined by Giorgio Agamben) declared by the post-September 11 political leadership.
This provisional attempt has become a permanent practice, where western territorial states have progressively implemented crueler immigration and asylum policies
Inside The Matamoros Camp
The Texas-Tamaulipas region, particularly the city of Matamoros is experiencing an important migratory movement comprised of refugees from Central America and the Caribbean seeking asylum in the United States.
These asylum seekers have been forcibly required to wait in Mexico until their asylum petitions are processed initially due to the 2019 Migrant Protection Protocols and later on in 2020 following the “Title 42 Process”, where asylum seekers are expelled base on the Public Health Service Act in Title 42 of the U.S. Code.
The U.S.-Mexico border symbolizes a global trend toward violent, hardened, and militarized secure borders where two forces converge: Washington’s border enforcement campaign and an ongoing war against the drug cartels’ domination in Mexico.
In the camp, people were exposed to very hazardous conditions due to the limited access to clean water, diseases carried by overall poor public health conditions, in addition to potential kidnapping, extortion, and sexual violence.
“Living in the camp is a constant nightmare. A nightmare in which nobody sleeps, nobody rests.”
“Some days I do not know if I can handle it anymore. Some days I just want to be in my tent alone and try to forget everything. I miss my family.”
“I lived like everyone in the Plaza
I came here with my son.
We slept on the sidewalk a few nights until I met a woman with a baby who let us stay in her tent.
A week after, we got a quilt that help with the cold, but the rain came, and we use the quilt as a barrier on the edges of the tent to keep the water from getting inside.”
— Luisa, October 2020