And on Monday, López was reminded simply how fragile his scenario is. His good friend and fellow Venezuelan Samuel Marchena was detained by immigration brokers and hours later turned one of many 39 migrants who died in a hearth at a detention heart.

López, who sleeps in a shelter and washes windshields at stoplights for money, stated he received’t quit making an attempt to enter the U.S., however he acknowledges he’s not welcome on this sprawling border metropolis that has grown bored with migrants in its group.

“My dream has turn into a nightmare,” López stated not too long ago, ready to weave between vehicles at a lightweight.

Tensions have simmered between migrants and residents in Mexican border cities for a number of years, with massive camps arrange close to crossings by those that can’t afford housing or cling to unrealistic hopes that U.S. authorities will abruptly admit them. In Ciudad Juarez, a metropolis of 1.5 million estimated to have as many as 25,000 migrants, fixed new arrivals dealing with an indeterminate wait had been already the topic of heated debate. The lethal hearth and accompanying consideration have solely added to the strained scenario.

Many border residents take pleasure of their cities as beacons of range and hospitality, however challenges mounted after the U.S. launched a apply underneath which migrants had been pressured to attend in Mexican border cities for an appointment to enter the U.S. to hunt asylum or different authorized standing.

An opaque system of ready lists for an opportunity to use for U.S. asylum managed by nongovernmnetal teams or people topped 55,000 names in 11 Mexican border cities in August, in response to a report by the Strauss Middle for Worldwide Safety and Regulation on the College of Texas, Austin.

Moreover, a Trump-era coverage that ended final yr resulted in additional than 70,000 folks ready in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courtroom.

And since March 2020, the U.S. has returned migrants from a number of international locations, largely Guatemala and Honduras, to Mexico underneath a rule designed to forestall the unfold of COVID-19. In January, the Biden administration launched a glitch-plagued app to exempt migrants from the pandemic-era rule, often called Title 42, and it’s now scheduling about 740 appointments per day alongside the border.

López has discovered the applying, referred to as CBPOne, to be sophisticated and irritating, however U.S. authorities have scheduled about 63,000 appointments by way of the app since Jan. 18.

U.S. authorities have already returned López to Mexico twice after he crossed the border with out an appointment. As soon as they allowed his sister, her husband and cousin who he had traveled with from Venezuela to stay within the U.S.

“Proper now, this can be a border of uncertainty, insecurity,” stated the Rev. Javier Calvillo, director of the Casa del Migrante shelter. Like many, Calvillo fears fallout from the hearth may worsen the present chaos, which he blamed on an absence of coordination amongst native, state and federal officers.

In early March, a whole lot of migrants crossed one of many worldwide bridges right here on the false rumor that U.S. authorities would allow them to enter. The incident shut down visitors for hours on an important hyperlink to El Paso, Texas, angering residents.

Mayor Cruz Pérez Cuellar began asking Juarez residents to cease giving cash to panhandling migrants, warning that his persistence was operating out. He insisted there was room within the metropolis’s shelters and work obtainable for migrants who need it, leaving no want for them to clog intersections.

“We’re going to have a stronger posture on this sense, taking good care of the town,” he stated March 13. “A vital second has arrived to place a cease and have a breaking level … as a result of they will have an effect on the town’s financial system and hundreds of Juarez (residents).”

After the hearth, critics accused the mayor of being behind the roundup of a few of the migrants detained that day. In response, Pérez Cuellar softened his rhetoric to say the town would bolster efforts to inform migrants about alternatives for work and shelter. He stated metropolis police couldn’t legally take migrants to the immigration detention heart and that he didn’t know of migrants’ complaints that police typically took their possessions and extorted them.

Mexico has arrested 5 folks on expenses of homicide and inflicting damage: three immigration officers, two personal safety guards and the migrant they accuse of setting hearth to mattresses within the facility. They are saying they plan to arrest at the least another.

Estrella Pérez, a 24-year-old nurse and Juarez resident, stated she was sorry about what occurred, however didn’t disguise her unhappiness with the rise in migration by way of the town, particularly of Venezuelan migrants. She stated they’re not in search of work.

She accused migrants of “invading” the streets and bridges. Regardless of the tragedy of the hearth, she stated, “there are going to be few individuals who change their perspective of them,” including that persons are now not prepared to tolerate new arrivals.

On Wednesday, Belen Sosa of Caracas, Venezuela, plodded together with her husband and a teenage daughter throughout a dusty clearing in Ciudad Juarez overlooking the Rio Grande and the U.S. border fence.

She described the indignations of dwelling in limbo whereas looking for an appointment to use for U.S. asylum and stated migrants stay in concern of detention and harassment as they seek for odd jobs.

The household weighed whether or not to show themselves in to a cluster of U.S. Border Patrol brokers Wednesday and threat instant elimination, as a whole lot of migrants flocked to a gate within the border fence. Sosa beforehand labored as a forensic technician in a morgue within the Venezuelan capital.

“Persons are bored with the mistreatment,” she stated. “They need to make us out to be delinquents. Migrating isn’t a criminal offense. What crime are we committing?”

Luis Vázquez, proprietor of a hamburger stand within the metropolis, conceded that many fellow residents are fed up with migrants, once more emphasizing the outsized presence of Venezuelans who are usually extra seen and vocal than the Central People transferring by way of the town. However he stated finally the town’s historical past as a border crossing would win out.

“What Juarez has is that it has at all times helped folks, and by no means left them alone,” he stated “And with this chance, many people are going to assist them.”

Yannerys Vian, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, rigorously maneuvered her pregnant stomach between vehicles to promote sweet at an intersection.

The deaths within the hearth made her offended, however not able to give up. She stated she left Venezuela in September after her younger daughter died from lack of medical consideration. She set out for the U.S. together with her husband and 3-year-old son, making it to Juarez in December.

On Wednesday, she joined the migrants crossing once more on the rumor the U.S. would allow them to enter. Many turned themselves over to authorities at a gap within the border fence, however Vian balked, fearing the she’d be handed again to Mexico, which might in flip ship her household farther south, erasing the good points they made.

“What occurred stuffed me with hate, with anger,” she stated. “What they did to these folks was a criminal offense, however I received’t give them the satisfaction of sending me again.” __

AP writers Morgan Lee in Ciudad Juarez and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.