Five months after the president closed the border, many who planned to enter US legally don’t know where to turn
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onald Trump’s crackdown on immigration upended lives on inauguration day when he abruptly closed the border for many who were just on the Mexican side of the border planning to cross into the US legally. Five months on, some hold on to hope, others are giving up.
A family from El Salvador seeking asylum was left stranded at the border within sight of Texas only three days into the second Trump administration. A grandfather, his daughter, his niece, her husband and two of his grandchildren had done things “the right way”, by requesting one of the highly limited appointments with US Border Patrol, from the Mexican side using the Biden-era mobile phone app called CBPOne. But on January 20, Trump signed an executive order cancelling all scheduled appointments, including theirs on 23 January at noon.
Trump crushed the family’s access to seek asylum, along with their dreams – and those of 30,000 other migrants who had been given prized appointments through the app. Many of them were fleeing combinations of extreme violence, authoritarianism and poverty in El Salvador, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela or within Mexico.
