MEXICO – When Dayana Castro heard that the US asylum appointment, she waited over a year for was cancelled in an instant, she had no doubt. She was heading north anyway she could.

The 25-year-old migrant, her husband and their four- and seven-year-old children had nothing left at home in Venezuela. They already had trekked the perilous Darien Gap jungle dividing Colombia and Panama and criminal groups that prey on migrants like them.

Castro was one of tens of thousands of migrants across Mexico with appointments to apply for US asylum at the border scheduled out through February until President Donald Trump took office and issued a series of executive orders to beef up border security and slash migration. One ended the use of the CBP One app that had allowed nearly one million people, many seeking asylum, to legally enter the US since January 2023.

“We’re going to keep going. We can’t go home after all we’ve been through, after all the countries we’ve fought our way through, only to give up now,” she said from a small shelter in central Mexico beside a freight train line they were riding north. (Jamaica Gleaner)

Photo: Migrants walk through Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, in an attempt to reach the US border. (AP)