Venezuelans expelled from US to Mexico vow to re-enter illegally
A day after a Venezuelan migrant was expelled from the US to Mexico, The Post witnessed her illegally crossing into America again over the weekend — just one of scores of booted asylum-seekers vowing to sneak back into the country.
Rogue migrant Angie Pina claims she first stepped foot on US soil on Wednesday morning, before President Biden announced Mexico had agreed to take Venezuelans seeking asylum who had been rejected from the US.
In hopes of discouraging illegal crossings at the border, the Biden administration announced it will grant 24,000 Venezuelans humanitarian entry if they apply online and arrive via air — rather by crossing the land border as hundreds of thousands have been doing, with El Paso, Texas, alone recording up to 2,100 migrants in a single day.
Pina was held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in El Paso for a day and a half before she learned she and dozens of other Venezuelan women in the same holding cell would be sent back to Mexico.
“It was a crisis — we were all yelling and sobbing,” she said.
“One lady led us all in prayer, but that’s when reality set in. They never told us why we were being sent back but some Venezuelan men who crossed behind us got to stay.”
Friday, Pina was escorted across one of El Paso’s international bridges and released into Mexico, where a new world of uncertainty awaited.
“I’m a lesbian; I have one month trying to get here and I’m afraid,” the 33-year-old said. “I’ve gone through so much to get here. I’m broke. I try to lift my head up, but I feel like I’m losing strength to go on. I feel like I might as well step in front of a car.”
Pina and other expelled Venezuelans stood outside a Mexican immigration center where they receive basic services — like a place to shower and charge their phones.
Early Saturday morning, she told The Post she was considering trying to cross the border again.
“I would like to try again because I can’t go back to Venezuela,” she explained, adding that she is an engineer in her homeland.
“I don’t have money to go back. I left because I have a three-year-old daughter I was unable to provide for because I was constantly discriminated against because of my sexual orientation.”
Other Venezuelans agreed that they too would try to get back into the US, even if that meant turning to dangerous people-smuggling cartels.
“If they don’t allows us back in, we will go back in — legally or illegally,” said another immigrant.
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“No one is going to go back. There’s thousands of Venezuelans on their way right now. They’re not going back.”
“I asked the Mexicans to deport me to Venezuela and they told me they couldn’t, so what are we supposed to do?” Asked Pina.
Expelled Venezuelans gathered in Juarez, Mexico said they had been left penniless through their journeys and couldn’t pay their way back to their country of origin.
By noon, Pina, her partner, and another Venezuelan woman decided to try their luck again and walked over the Rio Grande to El Paso, where they again surrendered themselves to a Border Patrol agent.
She was then taken to another holding cell where she would find out her fate — which was most likely to be deported again.