Entering Mexico from the U.S. is remarkably simple. On a summer morning, sitting in the backseat of a Toyota Sienna, I entered Reynosa after Joe Nolla, a Jesuit priest-in-training who ministers to migrants, exchanged a few words with a Mexican immigration officer. To our left trailed a seemingly endless line of cars, inside of which children slept and workers swigged coffee. As we entered Reynosa, the car rumbled as it forced its way through the scars of damaged roads. A few turns later we arrived at Casa Del Migrante, a shelter for migrants run by a group of nuns. The metal gate was pulled to the side, and we entered, driving under the barbed wire surrounding the shelter.
Immediately, Raymond, an 11-year-old Venezuelan boy whose face barely reached the passenger window, rushed to our car, hugging the Jesuits and then us. His and the other migrants’ smiles made my day. However, it was clear these weren’t smiles of surprise. They were smiles that said, “I’ve been waiting all day.” As Joe and Fr. Brian Strassburger greeted the parents and others, they asked about the migrants’ appointments, quickly hearing that Angela had finally received her CBP One appointment. Angela, Fr. Brian explained to us, had been waiting seven months at the shelter after being kidnapped in Reynosa.
Later, during mass, Fr. Brian called Angela up to the altar—a plastic table with a chalice on top—and everyone clapped in celebration. “Remember,” Father Brian told the crowd, “God is always with you. You will eventually get an appointment; the application works.”
Almost every day, the priests travel to shelters on both sides of the border, celebrating mass with migrants. For the migrants they encounter waiting patiently to enter legally through a CBP One appointment, the “open border” and “invasion” narrative is a myth that could not be further away from their current reality.
After President Joe Biden’s executive order in June 2024, the CBP One app became the primary way for migrants to legally enter the U.S. at the border. Each day, migrants can request an appointment at a border checkpoint to enter on temporary parole. Currently, wait times for appointments reach up to nine months. Migrants like Raymond and Angela are tethered to a taxing uncertainty, dictated by the result of 12 buttons they click every morning to request an appointment.
In addition to making changes to CBP One, the Biden-Harris administration is using the Mexican military to deter migrants, sending them to southern Mexico. They also struck deals with Costa Rica and Belize to restrict Venezuelans from flying to their countries. These measures are contributing to a sharp decline in the number of people waiting at the border, a trend evident when I visited shelters on the Mexico side of the wall.
John Moore/Getty Images
Today, with Donald Trump promising to close the border on day one, this drop has continued. However, millions of migrants, like the dozens I met at Casa del Migrante, Senda de Vida 2, and more shelters, are still waiting at the border. Most of them are unable to return home, and now face a ticking time bomb of uncertainty and fear, unsure of what the future holds.
Let us not forget. Regardless of changes in U.S. immigration policy, cartel violence, economic disaster, and political oppression continue to threaten the lives of countless honest and innocent human beings. These conditions force migrants to sacrifice everything, abandon families, and endure deadly journeys for only a chance at the American Dream. At Casa del Migrante, I talked with migrants like Emma who, after fleeing Venezuela with her son, was kidnapped on her journey, having to ask her struggling family members to pay a ransom.
Yet, despite these horrible realities, we talk about the “border crisis,” not the humanitarian crisis at the border. We say there is an “invasion” at our border, implying that the people entering are a danger coming to attack, rather than potential victims fleeing imminent danger. We say there is an “open border,” yet millions of people live the terrible consequences of the border closing. Our conversations about the border put migrants second.
If we want effective and humane border practices, we must humanize our approach to immigration policy by transcending our exclusionary obsession. Treating migrants with dignity and addressing border-related issues—crime, drugs, and economic troubles—are not mutually exclusive. Accepting this fact starts by remembering migrants’ humanity, not dehumanizing them to fuel disagreement and fear. The road to practical, bipartisan, and inclusive border policy is long and weary. Nevertheless, although we can disagree on what policy might look like, we must keep migrants’ needs and the opportunities they provide top of mind.
If we want to be a nation that prides itself on the American Dream and the promise of equality and opportunity, we cannot withhold America for ourselves. We cannot choose whom to give freedom to—there is no “but” in “freedom for all.” Monumental—but necessary—change begins not with building higher walls but in transforming our perception of the border and migrants, choosing to recognize migrants’ humanity so that we can work for solutions that benefit both the American people and future deserving American citizens like Raymond and Angela.
Inclusion of migrants is not only what allows for dignifying policy but a thinning of the immense polarization haunting U.S. politics. Because, in the perpetually relevant words of Martin Luther King, “hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
Juan Wulff is a Venezuelan-American writer and the founder of Through Their Eyes, a Begley Scholarship-funded project spotlighting migrant stories at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
