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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Tears flowed amid heartfelt embraces as Mexican households had been allowed transient reunions on the border Saturday with kin who migrated to america.
As a mariachi band performed the favored music “Las Mañanitas,” about 150 households handed over the Rio Grande to satisfy with family members they’d not seen for years.
Margarita Piña couldn’t conceal her emotion as she waited to greet her son, whom she hadn’t seen since he left house two years in the past in the midst of the pandemic to hunt a greater future within the U.S.
“It’s very laborious as a result of we don’t know what they’re struggling over there,” Piña mentioned.
Understanding their assembly can be restricted to solely 5 minutes, Piña mentioned she would reap the benefits of the restricted time to inform him “that we nonetheless love you very a lot.”
It was the tenth version of the “Hugs, not partitions” occasion, which was organized by humanitarian teams close to the Casa de Adobe Museum within the border metropolis of Ciudad Juárez, which sprawls throughout the border from El Paso, Texas.
In contrast to at earlier reunions, a robust guard of U.S. officers was current on the occasion, which got here simply days earlier than Washington will raise Title 42 asylum guidelines imposed for the pandemic that allowed the U.S. to expel greater than 2.8 million migrants since March 2020.
The tip to the availability Thursday is anticipated to encourage a surge of migrants towards the border, and U.S. authorities have beefed up safety, together with stringing barbed wire fencing. The federal government has mentioned 1,500 troops might be despatched to El Paso, along with 2,500 Nationwide Guardsmen already on the border.
“We now have by no means had a border as militarized as right now,” mentioned Fernando García, head of the Community in Protection of the Rights of Migrants.
“There’s a struggle towards migrants, refugees, towards us border crossers,” he added.