Borderzine (https://borderzine.com/author/puente-news-collaborative/)
The Puente News Collaborative is a unique binational news collaboration publishing stories about significant issues facing El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.
One year after his arrest, a National Migration Institute agent identified as Eduardo A.M., who is charged in the death of 40 migrants in the March 2023 fire in Juárez, has been released from prison and placed on parole while he awaits trial.
An El Paso Times investigation found a region shocked by record migrant deaths in 2023 and ill-equipped to track and respond to the tragedy.
By Iván Gómez Cruz/La Verdad
CIUDAD JUAREZ – Although Lara has not been able to cross the border for her job cleaning houses for 20 months, the 45-year-old woman said she never lost contact with her El Paso employers. With Monday’s reopening of the U.S. border to non-essential travelers she said that “with God’s favor” she will return to work. Since 2018, Lara worked as a maid for three families in El Paso to help support her family. But in March 2020, the U.S. government closed the border due to the health crisis unleashed by COVID-19. Sometimes she crossed on foot and sometimes she got an acquaintance to take her by car, she said.
For nearly two years, land borders between Mexico and the United States have been closed to all non-essential travel. Air borders between the countries, though, have fallen in a grey area — with private planes and chartered flights touching down every day in El Paso.
By Lauren Villagran / El Paso Times
At midnight on Monday, Nov. 8, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security lifts the restrictions to “non-essential” traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border. That means that Mexican nationals with a valid border crossing card will able to return to El Paso and other U.S. border communities to shop and visit friends and family for the first time in 20 months. Here’s what you need to know. Does the change affect U.S. citizens or lawful residents?
American residents and citizens who live in Ciudad Juárez are taking advantage of their status to cross to the United States and be vaccinated. But the health authorities in El Paso are not keeping records of people from Ciudad Juárez who have benefitted from this.
Health authorities in the Mexican state of Chihuahua said it is hard to determine the exact number of residents in Ciudad Juárez who have been vaccinated in El Paso since a large percentage of the population has dual nationality, Mexican and American.
By René Kladzyk and Maria Ramos Pacheco/El Paso Matters and Veronica Martinez/La Verdad
First of a three-part series
Running children and crying babies create a cacophony at El Buen Samaritano shelter, but in a far corner, Carmela holds her 2-year-old in silence. She can’t communicate with anyone — she doesn’t know Spanish, and no one at the facility can understand the Indigenous language she speaks. Indigenous migrants like Carmela encounter extra hurdles in attempting to reach the United States: communication difficulties, cultural barriers and anti-Indigenous discrimination. In this three-part series, we’ll trace the path of a migration journey from Guatemala, investigating the challenges that Indigenous migrants face at every stage. Part one looks at migration drivers and the arduous journey across Mexico; part two discusses added barriers at the U.S. border as Indigenous migrants interact with immigration officials; and part three centers on the struggles Indigenous migrants face in shelters in Juárez and how they’re rendered invisible in U.S. immigration courts.
Nathaly Gonzalez crosses from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez a couple times a week. She brings groceries to her grandparents — they prefer the bulk foods sold on the U.S. side. She visits her brother and takes her dog to the vet.
Gonzalez and her mother are dual U.S.-Mexican citizens and live in El Paso; her brother and grandparents are Mexican citizens and live in Ciudad Juárez.
Things have changed significantly for Gonzalez and her family since the COVID-19 travel restrictions went into effect on March 21, 2020, but she still crosses with ease, regardless of whether her reasons for crossing could be defined as “essential.”
In the year since the pandemic’s arrival, thousands of people in both Ciudad Juárez and El Paso have died of COVID-19. Schools have shuttered. Businesses have struggled.
This timeline, produced as part of the Puente Media Collaborative, looks back at crucial moments in the past year.