Pregnant on the South Side of the Mexico-US Border Eli Cahan - Rolling Stone
go to original July 27, 2022

Amid the bustle of Tijuana, the average onlooker might miss the bulge in Claudia’s belly.

That’s partially by design: Claudia, a petite 32-year-old who has been in limbo in Tijuana for over a year while waiting her turn to seek asylum, has become adept at keeping a low profile in a city that ranks among the most dangerous in the world.

Claudia is one of the thousands of pregnant women among the hundreds of thousands of migrants who reach the U.S.-Mexico border each year with hopes of crossing it. She’s also one of the millions of migrants who, during the pandemic, have been turned away from seeking asylum on the soil of the United States.

Since March 2020, intensified border policies initiated by the Trump administration have largely been maintained by U.S. courts. Contrary to Biden’s campaign promises, little has changed since his inauguration in January 2021, and some anti-immigration programs have been expanded under his watch. And despite a June 30 ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of reversing one of these policies forcing migrants awaiting asylum hearings to stay in Mexico, the White House’s ongoing implementation of others means the court’s decision is, for the time being, little more than symbolic.

Moreover, these decisions in D.C. have left the many asylum-seekers like Claudia fenced off in Mexico’s northernmost cities beneath advertisements for popcorn chicken buckets and cheap liposuction. As tens of thousands of migrants from exempted countries, like Ukraine, pass largely unimpeded through the San Ysidro border station, migrants just miles south of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas remain mired in a disconcerting — and dangerous — limbo.

Border towns like Matamoros, Reynosa, and Ciudad Juárez — which are overrun by ubiquitous and particularly ruthless gangs — can be perilous places for anyone, let alone those who have fled their homelands carrying little more than a backpack. This is especially the case for pregnant women. There have been more than 10,000 violent attacks on migrants living at the border since the Trump anti-immigration policies were enacted, according to the nonprofit group Human Rights First. And those are just the ones that victims or witnesses report, attorneys and NGOs working in the region say.

Pregnant women, advocates say, make for some of the easiest targets for the cartels that menace, exploit, and extort migrants at the border because they tend to be among the most desperate and most physically vulnerable. Women have been kidnapped, beaten, and shot by gangs hungry for profits, advocates say — violence that, on more than one occasion, has triggered women to go into labor.

Civil rights attorneys like Mitra Ebadolahi believe the prohibitive immigration policies have only intensified the risks pregnant women face.

Read the rest at Rolling Stone

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!