Yearning to Breathe Free: A new U.S. immigration policy is leaving thousands of asylum seekers stranded on a path fraught with danger.

• Author: Deslandes, Ann Louise

In the center of the city of Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas, some twenty miles from Mexico's border with Guatemala, migrants and locals gather every evening in a small plaza dedicated to nineteenth-century Mexican President Benito Juarez. They sit at the feet of Juarez's statue, flanked by one of the Mexican political icon's well-known quotes inscribed in large gold letters: "Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace."

Long after Juarez and his dream of a tolerant, liberal Mexico, Tapachula in the twenty-first century has become an arbitrary host to a kind of extraordinary meeting of nations. Always a transit hub due to its location close to an international border, since about 2015 the number of people arriving to the city from outside Mexico has grown exponentially--from an average of 39,000 annual encounters between migrants and federal migration officials in Chiapas between 2007 and 2014 to 76,333 in 2021 alone.

In 2021 and 2022, Mexico received the third-highest number of applications for asylum in the world, with the vast majority being made in Tapachula. As of late January, most migrants are arriving from ten nations, according to Mexico's refugee agency, COMAR: Haiti, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua. Other arrivals include migrants from African countries like Cameroon, Angola, and Senegal, and from South Asian nations including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The transit has transformed the tropical city, with traditional Mexican food and music now mingling with the signs of Central American, Caribbean, South Asian, and African cultures: Salvadoran pupusas, Haitian beats, Indian curries.

Many of the visitors are fleeing for their lives, escaping armed conflict, natural disasters, or economic collapse at home; all are seeking the chance at a dignified life free of violence and poverty in the countries they've been compelled to leave--some of them up to a decade ago, like the Haitians who left home in the wake of that country's devastating 2010 earthquake. Many hope to be reunited with family members in the United States; most left home anticipating that the United States would be their final destination. The journey--highly dangerous and sometimes fatal--is largely fueled by the migrants' religious faith and belief in the American Dream of economic self-determination.

The migrant trail through southern Mexico has always been broadly shaped by the vicissitudes of U.S. border policy and foreign policy, and, most recently, a presidential announcement on January 5 was no exception. Indeed, this time, the edges of the path to asylum were sharpened.

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