By Lizbeth Diaz, Laura Gottesdiener, and Alexandra Ulmer
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Nydia Montenegro fled violence and poverty in her homeland of Venezuela and survived a kidnapping while traveling north into Mexico, arriving in the border city of Tijuana on Sunday for an asylum appointment in the United States that will finally reunite her with her family. Her son lives in New York.
This appointment has now been cancelled.
When President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, migrants waiting in Mexico nervously scanned the U.S. government app known as CBP One, through which many were able to schedule appointments to seek asylum. While updating the app, an alert came up: “Current appointments scheduled through CBP One are no longer valid.”
The shock struck the shelter in Tijuana, a few meters from the border.
“I can’t believe it,” Montenegro, 52, said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, God, no.”
US border authorities confirmed they had closed the app and canceled current appointments.
Montenegro is among thousands of immigrants whose hopes of arriving legally in the United States were suddenly dashed in the days and weeks leading up to their appointment.
Around her, other migrants cried as they repeatedly tried to download the app, growing desperate. Some received emails canceling their appointments, others received an alert, and others couldn’t open the app at all.
The move represents one of the earliest changes made by the Trump administration, as the president pledged in his inaugural address to send troops to the US-Mexico border, step up deportations, and designate criminal gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
Reuters followed Montenegro’s journey for two months, from excitement when she got an appointment on Wednesday, January 22 — just two days after Trump took office — to disappointment when it was erased.
Elsewhere along the border there were similar scenes.
In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, several migrants with CBP One appointments scheduled for later Monday received notice that they were cancelled.
“It’s over, they’ve removed it,” said Margeles Tinoco, from Colombia, who traveled with her husband and son. “They banned it,” she told her thirteen-year-old son. “There is nothing we can do.”
In Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass in Texas, migrants with scheduled appointments were turned away. They were clutching backpacks and blankets as they rested against the wall, trying to figure out what to do next. Some sent tearful voice messages to their families back home.
For Montenegro, this is an overwhelming transformation. She arrived in Tijuana on Sunday full of optimism and excited to join her 24-year-old son in New York, whom she last saw more than a year ago. “Today my life begins again,” she told Reuters at the time, smiling.
She was kidnapped last year with two of her nephews and dozens of others, including children, on the day she arrived in southern Mexico from Guatemala. Two days later, the group managed to escape but has been traumatized by the incident ever since.
Now she didn’t know what to do, stranded in a foreign city thousands of miles from her home and almost within walking distance of the country where she had hoped to start a new life.
Still in shock, she cannot give up the hope she has been carrying since her appointment was confirmed. Even when she heard of others being turned away from the border, she insisted: “I’m going to my appointment.”
(This story has been rewritten to pin the city name to Piedras Negras, not Piedras Negro, in the signature)
Say Job City in Pakistan for today latest jobs opportunities in private and Govt departments. View all new Government careers collected from daily. sayjobcity.com
