Between January 22 and 31, the Customs Immigration and Control Service (ICE) arrested more than eight thousand 200 people in USAaccording to data that the agency published in X.
That daily average was approximately three times greater than the number of arrests registered by ICE during the last year of Joe Biden’s mandateaccording to the American media Times Union.
These figures have been increasing over the days, and a feeling has become increasingly present among the migrant community: fear.
Such is the case of many people who have made the decision to return to their countries of origin to avoid being separated from their families.
However, the return is not easy either. According to Mayerlin Villalobos, a Venezuelan migrant who decided to self -lead to return to his country, has been “Easier to reach the United States than to return to Venezuela.”
According to the American media Univisionafter Villalobos was delivered with his family on the border, they lived in California, USA, for a year and a half and had work permit as part of the process of a TPS application (Temporary protection status); However, for not attending a judicial hearing, his status changed to deportation.
“We were afraid that at a time when we were working and children at school, they were going to grab and be separated from our children,” says Villalobos, who during the report was on an island in the Caribbean in Panama.
The family had been waiting for a boat for three days that took them to the border with Colombia.
Villalobos comments that he regrets having left Venezuela, seeing the suffering of his children. “If I could erase the memory of my children, I would erase your memory from everything, from the beginning of the trip,” he says.
The initial family plan was to fly to Colombia, but the immigration authorities in Mexico prevented them from addressing the planes, which forced them to travel through land.
From that island in Panama, a ten -hour journey in an open sea was still waiting for them to get to Colombia and, from there, take their way to finally reach Venezuela.
This is the situation in which there are many migrants, because, after January 20, they no longer feel safe to live in the United States.
Churches, schools, hospitals and other places that immigrants considered insurance are now open to immigration authorities to make arrests.