Cross-border cargo trains disrupted as US strains to contain migrant rush

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Two major freight rail companies warned of disruptions to thousands of tonnes of cargo in Mexico this week after operations were blocked or suspended because of a wave of migrants crossing the country to reach the US.

Grupo Mexico on Tuesday said it had temporarily stopped 60 trains across the country because of “severe risks” to the migrants. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) closed train traffic at several border crossings near Eagle Pass, a small town on the Rio Grande around 150 miles west of San Antonio, Texas, on Wednesday, leaving thousands of tonnes of freight stuck, according to Union Pacific.

The company on Thursday said it did not have an estimated time for the reopening of Eagle Pass, whose mayor has declared a state of emergency, and that some trains were being held at their origin to alleviate congestion.

“Thousands of rail cars cross the border at Eagle Pass each day and once the gateway reopens, our goal is to quickly get trains launched and restore cross-border movement,” Union Pacific said.

CBP, a federal agency, said it had taken “immediate action, suspending rail operations and vehicular traffic at several crossings in the area to surge resources and personnel to the scene”. The agency said it picked up roughly 2,500 migrants at Eagle Pass on Wednesday.

There has been a record wave of migration from Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States, driven mainly by political repression and economic crisis. Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba have been some of the largest sources of migrants.

The influx of migrants into the US in particular has posed a major political and humanitarian challenge for President Joe Biden, who has in recent weeks faced growing calls from fellow Democrats to provide more assistance to US cities and states struggling to offer resources to waves of migrants.

The White House late on Wednesday said it would extend temporary protections for nearly half a million Venezuelans who are already in the US, which will allow them to work legally without the threat of deportation.

Republican critics warn the move will only encourage more migrants, but Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, welcomed the development, saying the state would “immediately begin the process of signing people up for work authorisation and getting them into jobs so they can become self-sufficient”.

In Manhattan, Venezuelan asylum-seekers celebrated as news spread of the administration’s move. “Thank you very much, President Biden!” said Daniel Molina as he and a friend watched a video on his phone in which an immigration lawyer explained in Spanish what the policy change entailed. “We’re young people — I’m 21, my friend’s 23. We want to work.”

They were standing outside the Roosevelt Hotel, near Grand Central Station, which has been repurposed as a processing centre for the more than 120,000 asylum seekers who have come to New York City over the past year, creating a burden that the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, warned would “destroy” the city.

The US government has long pushed Mexico to try to contain migration. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, regularly expresses sympathy to migrants but in practice his government has deployed the armed forces and immigration agents to step up detentions.

López Obrador on Thursday said global organisations such as the UN and World Bank had not done enough to help poorer countries. “There isn’t a single plan . . . from the major powers to help countries with the most poverty,” he said.

Grupo Mexico operates parts of the train route known to migrants as “The Beast”, which they hop on to try to avoid immigration agents stationed across the country. Migrants say it is a brutal journey that carries the risk of injury from falling off, freezing cold conditions and a lack of food.

In the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, more than 1,500 people were gathered at one of Grupo Mexico’s operations in Torreon, and in the centre of the country hundreds more were at points in the central states of Guanajuato and Aguascalientes, the company said on Tuesday.