By Lizbeth Diaz, Laura Gottesdiener and Alexandra Ulmer
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Nydia Montenegro fled violence and poverty at home in Venezuela, escaped kidnapping while traveling north into Mexico and arrived in the border city of Tijuana on Sunday to receive an asylum appointment in the United States that would finally reunite her. His son lives in New York.
This meeting is now cancelled.
As President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, migrants waiting in Mexico nervously checked the US government’s app known as CBP One, which many have used to schedule asylum appointments. When they updated the app, a warning came up: “Existing appointments scheduled through CBP One are no longer valid.”
Shock engulfed the shelter in Tijuana, just yards from the border.
“I can’t believe it,” the 52-year-old Montenegrin said, tears running down his cheeks. “No, God, no.”
The US Border Patrol confirmed that it had shut down the app and canceled existing appointments.
Montenegro is among thousands of migrants whose hopes of entering the U.S. legally ended suddenly days and weeks before they were due to arrive.
Around him, other migrants wept as they repeatedly tried to load the app, growing desperate. Some got emails about canceling appointments, some got warnings, and some just couldn’t open the app.
The move is one of the first changes made by the Trump administration, after the president pledged in his inaugural address to send troops to the US-Mexico border, step up deportations and designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
Reuters has tracked Montenegro’s trip for two months, from excitement when he scheduled the meeting for Wednesday, Jan. 22 — just two days into Trump’s inauguration — to disappointment as it was canceled.
There were similar scenes elsewhere along the border.
In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, several migrants with CBP One appointments scheduled for later Monday received notices that they had been canceled.
“It’s over, they destroyed it,” said Margelis Tinoco, from Colombia, who traveled with her husband and son. “They blocked it,” he told his thirteen-year-old son. “There’s nothing we can do.”
At Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass in Texas, migrants were being turned away by destination. They held backpacks and blankets as they leaned against the wall, trying to figure out what to do next. Some sent tearful voice messages to their families back home.
This is a devastating turn for Montenegro. She arrived in Tijuana on Sunday full of optimism and excited to join her 24-year-old son in New York, whom she last saw a year ago. “Today my life starts again,” he told Reuters with a smile.
Last year, she was kidnapped along with her two nephews and dozens of others, including children, the day she arrived in southern Mexico from Guatemala. Two days later, the group managed to escape, but have since been traumatized by the incident.
Now he doesn’t know what to do, thousands of miles from home in a strange city and almost from the country where he had hoped to start a new life.
Still in shock, he can’t let go of the hope he’s been harboring since his appointment was confirmed. Even as he hears of others being turned away at the border, he insists, “I’m going to my date.”
(This story has been rewritten to name the town after Piedras Negras, not Piedras Negro, in the sign)