Tears and shock as Trump crushes dreams of migrants in Mexico who should enter US Reuters

By Lizbeth Diaz, Laura Gottesdiener and Alexandra Ulmer

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Nidia Montenegro fled violence and poverty at home in Venezuela, survived a kidnapping while traveling north into Mexico and arrived in the border city of Tijuana on Sunday for an asylum appointment in the U.S. that will finally reunite her with her son lives in New York.

That appointment has now been cancelled.

As President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, migrants waiting in Mexico nervously checked the US government’s app known as CBP One, which many used to schedule asylum appointments. As they refreshed the app, a warning came up: “Existing appointments made through CBP One are no longer valid.”

The shock hit the shelter in Tijuana, just a few meters from the border.

“I can’t believe it,” Montenegro, 52, said as tears streamed down her face. – No, God, no.

US border officials have confirmed that they have closed the application and canceled existing appointments.

Montenegro is among thousands of migrants whose hopes of reaching the US legally were suddenly dashed in the days and weeks before the appointment.

Around her, other migrants were crying as they repeatedly tried to load the app, their desperation mounting. Some received emails canceling appointments, others received a warning, and some simply could not open the app.

The move represents one of the earliest changes made by the Trump administration as the president promised in his inaugural address to send troops to the US-Mexico border, step up deportations and designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Reuters followed Montenegro’s journey for two months, from excitement when it secured the Wednesday, January 22 slot – just two days after Trump took office – to disappointment when it was scrapped.

There were similar scenes elsewhere along the border.

In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, several migrants with CBP One appointments scheduled for later Monday received notices that they had been canceled.

“It’s over, they eliminated him,” said Margelis Tinoco from Colombia, who was traveling with her husband and son. “They blocked him,” she told her thirteen-year-old son. “There’s nothing we can do.”

In Piedras Negras, opposite Texas’ Eagle Pass, migrants with appointments were turned away. They clutched their backpacks and blankets as they rested against the wall, trying to figure out what to do next. Some sent tearful voicemails to families back home.

For Montenegro, it is a devastating turn of events. She arrived in Tijuana on Sunday full of optimism and excited to join her 24-year-old son in New York, whom she last saw more than a year ago. “Today my life starts again,” she told Reuters at the time, full of smiles.

Last year, she was kidnapped along with her two nephews and dozens of others, including children, on the day she arrived in southern Mexico from Guatemala. Two days later, the group managed to escape, but she has been carrying the trauma of the incident ever since.

Now she doesn’t know what to do, stranded in a strange city thousands of miles from home and almost within reach of the country where she hoped to start a new life.

Still in shock, she can’t shake the hope she’s been carrying since her appointment was confirmed. Even when she hears of others being turned away at the border, she insists: “I will go to the appointment.”

(This story has been edited to correct the town’s name to Piedras Negras, not Piedras Negro, in the signature)