Crowds of Migrants Gather at US-Mexico Border as Asylum Restrictions Lifted

At certain points along the US-Mexico border, crowds of migrants clutching bags of belongings or holding children’s hands waited Friday to apply for asylum after new US immigration rules went into effect. And more people kept coming.

A 3-year asylum restriction known as Title 42 came to an end, and was replaced by those new rules imposed by the Joe Biden administration.

Many migrants on both sides of the border had been waiting for days. In San Diego, a woman holding a baby flashed a bracelet to a border guard to tell him she was among those who had waited the longest.

Other people were peeking through one of two border walls between which they stood. A group of men huddled under thermal blankets that were issued to them in an emergency. And some children entertained themselves during the long hours by kicking around an empty water bottle in an impromptu soccer match.

Border agents supervised the long lines of migrants, and policed ​​crowds waiting to be processed by immigration authorities. In El Paso, Texas, migrants lined up in the dirt outside a gate in the border wall.

In Brownsville, Texas, volunteers arrived at a border point and delivered pizzas to those detained there.

Outside the city, members of the Texas National Guard stood by coils of barbed wire to keep watch for illegal crossings.

And in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, located across the Rio Grande (Rio Grande in the United States) from Brownsville, Texas, families of migrants continued to arrive hoping to enter the United States. A small group that had received approval from a charity were escorted by Mexican immigration agents across a bridge into the United States.