Sudden border closure by Biden administration divides Venezuelan families

Miguel Peñaranda, his wife and two stepchildren believed that the long odyssey that began seven years ago when they left Venezuela ended when they arrived in the United States on October 6. But in the end, her worst problems had only just begun.

After turning themselves in to US Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, the Peñarandas were placed in separate cells – for men and women – for what they assumed was a day or two to process the initial request for asylum.

Peñaranda, 44, and his 18-year-old stepson were released three days later in Brownsville, Texas, but there was no sign of his wife or 20-year-old stepdaughter.

An agonizing week passed before Peñaranda received a call from his wife, Heyllyn Yepez. “My love, I’m so relieved to hear her voice,” he remembers saying. She was sobbing into the phone. “We’re in Mexico!” she said. “We were deported and sent to Acapulco.”

The family was one of many torn apart by the Biden administration’s sudden border closure last month to Venezuelan migrants arriving in large numbers in the US.

The decision to expel Venezuelans under a pandemic-era policy that allows for quick expulsions, previously applied primarily to Mexicans and Central Americans, had the unforeseen effect of isolating many Venezuelan families on opposite sides of the US-Mexico border.

A Venezuelan in Utah earned enough money to send for his wife and three small children, but they were all held up in Mexico when the expansion of the expulsion policy was announced.

A Venezuelan woman who arrived in New York in September with her husband and two children said her mother and sisters were stranded in Costa Rica, unable to join her if the border remained closed.

“They can’t go home because they would have to go through the jungle. And they can’t come here,” said the woman, Loiseth Colmenares, 30. “Most families are like this — we had family members on the way and now we can’t bring them. them. We are losing hope of being reunited with our families.”

Three Republican governors have highlighted what their party has called the “Biden border crisis”: the transport of thousands of migrants from the border to cities like New York, Washington and Chicago, whose unprepared city officials and charities have struggled to find shelter. and other services for migrants.

But the Biden administration created a new cycle of confusion and anxiety when it suddenly barred entry to most Venezuelans — including many who were supposed to be reunited with relatives already in the US.

“It’s not the intentional family separation that happened under Trump, but it’s still having a devastating impact on families,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting unaccompanied migrant children.

“It’s a consequence of immigration policies that were not well thought out,” she said.

Inadvertent family separations are just part of the chaos that followed the arrival of many more Venezuelans than US border facilities were prepared to receive.

The Biden administration last year faced the biggest influx of unauthorized migration since the mid-2000s. There were nearly 200,000 Venezuelans among the roughly 2.4 million migrants detained at the border in fiscal 2022, arriving amid economic crises. , politics and climate that have driven people from all over the world to travel to the United States.

In the weeks leading up to the new expulsion policy, pressure on US border facilities has been exacerbated, creating a tumultuous situation whose dimensions are only now becoming apparent as migrants admitted to the US report their difficulties.

In some cases, it appears that Border Patrol agents were sending Venezuelans to seemingly random cities across the country, such as Denver, Salt Lake City and Sacramento, Calif., where many did not have relatives or friends to welcome them.

Aid workers in those cities said some migrants arrived with immigration documents that cited arbitrary addresses where they had been told they would find assistance — even though local shelters had not been set up to receive them.

Autumn Gonzalez, a volunteer attorney and board member of NorCal Resist, a nonprofit immigrant network, said eight perplexed immigrants showed up in Sacramento in September with an address that would be a shelter, they were told at the border. It ended up being an office building. “This is playing with people’s lives,” she said.

Luis Miranda, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Border Patrol agents asked migrants where they intended to go when they were released from custody. Those who didn’t know could give an address for a non-governmental organization, he explained.

Miranda stated that there was no deliberate separation of families, but that there may have been cases where adult family members could not be legally prosecuted or detained together and separated.

“In cases where this has happened and we have been made aware of the issue, we have taken proactive steps to bring these family members together,” he said in a statement.

Members of Kids in Need of Defense said some Venezuelans now isolated in Mexico are so desperate that they are trying to send their children alone to a safe place in the US, knowing the minors will not be expelled – a situation that creates more separations. “We advise them on the risks associated with this option,” said Megan McKenna, the group’s director of public engagement.

Peñaranda said his family is still evaluating what he will do. Returning to Venezuela is not an option, and he is not sure the Mexican authorities would allow everyone to remain in Mexico.

“I would rather be sent to China, anywhere, than to be separated,” he said. “I understand that this was not the right way to enter the country. But this is not the way to treat people.”