MEXICO CITY – Norma regrets ever having called the police. A shop owner and local coordinator for a political party on the outskirts of Mexico City, Norma called authorities in November to file a complaint about noise coming from the building next door to her house. The building was being used by a rival political party, she believes. Norma doesn’t know what resulted from the police investigation, but the 35-year-old began receiving intimidating threats. Strange men began to approach her in the street and warn she didn’t have long to live, she said.

When that rival party won the municipal elections two weeks ago, Norma decided to leave town, she said, fearing that she would be further targeted. “After the vote, it got ugly in my city,” she said. CNN is using only her first name due to concerns for her safety. CNN met Norma on a dusty road in southern Arizona, just moments after she and her three children  13, 8 and 2 years old  climbed across the low fence that separates Mexico from the United States.

They are among several migrant families on the border who told CNN they were fleeing the fallout of Mexico’s bloody national elections, which saw dozens of political candidates assassinated and hundreds threatened on the campaign trail.

All said they hoped for asylum from the US government. And all said they had not heard of a new executive order by US President Joe Biden blocking asylum requests from most people illegally crossing the southern border during periods of high volume.

A few miles east along the border, CNN met several more Mexican families who had been sheltering for days in a tent erected by a local humanitarian group. Bottles of water had been left out for them, along with signs warning to wait for Border Patrol agents to show up, rather than attempt to walk any further under the hot sun.

Some were fleeing general violence, a lack of jobs, kidnapping threats made to their families. Two men with a family sitting on the ground in the stifling heat said they too had fled Mexico following the elections. They had received threats for supporting the wrong candidate in their town, one said.(CNN)…[+]