Tents ice over as freezing weather hits migrant communities near US-Mexico border

ABC News / Disney ^ | February 16, 2021 | By Anne Laurent and Meredith Deliso

[Oldeconomybuyer]

As snow and ice slam much of the southern United States, migrant communities along the U.S.-Mexico border are enduring freezing temperatures with scarce resources.

At a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas, tents made out of blue tarp have iced over as a winter blast brought freezing temperatures and icy rain to the region this week. Water used for cooking and bathing has also frozen.

Many of those living at the camp are waiting in Mexico while their asylum applications are processed in the U.S., under the Trump administration's so-called "Remain in Mexico" policy. President Joe Biden is expected to start processing and admitting migrants forced to wait in Mexico under the "Migrant Protection Protocols" this week.

One resident at the camp, a Honduran woman named Karen, told ABC News she has been at this camp for over a year now with her two sons, ages 10 and 11.

"By the grace of the lord, we are alive," she said Monday in Spanish, after the camp woke up to frozen tents.

She is worried her children will get sick because of the weather, as they experienced snow for the first time.

"Look, look. There is snow. I never believed it," she said. "People told me about snow, but I never believed it -- and now I do."

Power has been mostly out for the past two days in the city, and there is no electricity at the camp. Some volunteers donated coal so that residents could build bonfires Monday night.

On Tuesday, several migrants ABC News spoke with started crying as they recounted their experience fleeing their home country and living in the camp during the extreme weather.

[jetson]

Hot today, cold tamale.

[jmacusa]

Yeah, “Bronco Hill’’ was in that approximate area of Schuyler Ave where that housing is along the old rail road tracks. God Almighty we used to do that in the winter and in summer we’d walk along those tracks doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

It’s a miracle we weren’t killed.

[kearnyirish2]

Understood.

We used to walk out those tracks to Snake Hill in Secaucus (though since the tracks were discontinued, the rail bridge over the Hackensack River has been left open - no way to cross).