Russians on the Mexican border by hook or by crook try to get asylum in the US

The flow of Russians who want to enter the US through Mexico has increased 35 times compared to last year. Russians find ways to circumvent asylum restrictions, reports Yahoo News.

Photo: Shutterstock

Maxim Derzhko says that this is one of the most terrible experiences in his life. A longtime opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he flew from Vladivostok to the Mexican border city of Tijuana with his 14-year-old daughter and was in a car with seven other Russians. All that separated them from applying for asylum in the United States was an American officer stuck in traffic as the cars slowly approached the inspection booths.

“Emotions are hard to put into words,” he says. - It's fear. Uncertainty. It's really difficult. We didn't have a choice."

The excitement worked. After spending a day in custody, Derzhko and his daughter were released to seek asylum, joining thousands of Russians who recently took the same route to America.

Even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to punitive sanctions by the United States and its allies, the United States was already seeing a surge in asylum seekers from Russia. More than 8600 Russians took refuge on the U.S.-Mexico border from August to January - 35 times more than the 249 who did so in the same period a year earlier. Nine out of ten used official border crossings in San Diego.

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Migrants from other former Soviet republics are following the same route in smaller numbers, although some government officials are now expecting more Ukrainians. March 10 USA adopted a Ukrainian family of four for humanitarian reasons after being turned down twice.

Russians do not need a visa to visit Mexico, unlike the United States. Many fly from Moscow to Cancun, entering Mexico as tourists, and go to Tijuana, where they pool their money to buy or rent a car.

Concrete barriers direct 24 lanes of traffic towards the border, marked by several rows of yellow reflectors, such as those that separate lanes before cars reach inspection booths.

Migrants simply have to get to the buffer zone to be granted asylum in the US. But U.S. officers stationed on the Mexican side of the border control the passage, looking into cars, asking drivers for travel documents, and stopping cars they think are suspicious.

“It was a very scary moment for all of us,” Derzhko, who crossed the border in August, said in an interview at his home in Los Angeles. “The children were with us, everyone was very worried, very worried.”

Russians exchange travel tips on social networks and instant messengers. One unidentified man recounted his journey from Red Square in Moscow to a hotel room in San Diego, with stops in Cancun and Mexico City. His video on YouTube shows him admitting to nervousness after buying a used car in Tijuana, but later in San Diego, he says that everything went smoothly - despite two days in US custody - and that others planning the trip should not be afraid.

Russians are practically guaranteed the right to asylum if they are on US soil, even as President Joe Biden continues to widely enforce Trump-era asylum restrictions. Border guards may refuse to seek asylum for migrants on the grounds that this could lead to the spread of COVID-19. But cost, logistics and strained diplomatic relations make it difficult to send people of some nationalities home.

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Russians and other people from former Soviet republics prefer to pass through official crossings rather than trying to illegally cross the border in the deserts and mountains. They don't usually hire smugglers, but a "middleman" can help arrange a trip, according to Chad Plantz, a special agent.

While Moscow-Cancun is the most common route, Plantz said, some Russians fly from Amsterdam or Paris to Mexico City and then on to Tijuana.

This led to some clashes.

The driver of the SUV, in a state of agitation, pressed the gas pedal when he saw a gap between the lanes, his lawyer Martin Molina told the judge earlier this month. Eleven other Russians were in the SUV, including the man's wife, 5-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. Passengers raised their hands and shouted "Shelter!"

“All he saw were the bright lights of San Isidro,” Molina said. “He wanted to get there.”

The judge ordered the driver's release after nearly three months in jail. A man opposed to Russian intervention in Chechnya planned to seek asylum with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

Other incidents raised security concerns, Plantz said. Also on December 12, a driver in a car carrying migrants from Ukraine and Tajikistan, ignoring an officer's order to show identification, hit the officer on the arm with a door mirror while driving past him, according to court documents.

"They're probably a little disoriented themselves, not quite sure what they're doing, but they're holding on, stepping on the gas, breaking through," Plantz said.

A federal judge in San Diego ruled that blocking asylum seekers is illegal, but gave no specific instructions to allow authorities to continue their practice. Erica Pinheiro, director of litigation and policy for Al Otro Lado, the human rights group that is suing the asylum restriction at the border, said U.S. officials are coordinating with Mexican authorities to keep migrants out of the buffer zone.

Yulia Pashkova, a San Diego lawyer representing Russian asylum seekers, links the surge in migration to the jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last year. Asylum seekers include anti-Putin, gay men, Muslims and business owners terrorized by the authorities.

“When they think of America, they think of freedom, democracy and, frankly, a good economic situation,” she said.

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