Asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico celebrate Trump defeat with cries of joy and prayers – By Gabe Ortiz (Daily Kos) / Nov 9 2020
Among people worldwide who celebrated Donald Trump’s defeat were asylum-seekers he’s forced out of the U.S. under inhumane and illegal policy. Some of the nearly 70,000 asylum-seekers forced into Mexico under Migrant Protection Protocols have been living in a border camp for over a year now. But even the squalid conditions there couldn’t dampen their spirits on Saturday. They suddenly had hope.
“This is not only a Biden victory,” Mervin Hidalgo told BuzzFeed News. An asylum-seeker from Venezuela, he’s been living at Matomoros since October. “We migrants also won, and we are very happy. Seeing Trump once again sit on his throne would have been fatal for us.” The lives of Hidalgo and thousands of others truly hinged on the outcome of this election. If Trump remained in office, Remain in Mexico would have continued indefinitely. President-elect Joe Biden pledged he would end it.
Jose Lopez, an asylum-seeker from Nicaragua, told BuzzFeed News that the mood at the camp was jubilant. “[P]eople shouted and cried,” the report continued. Some had placed balloons along the Rio Grande that featured the words “Bye Trump” and poop emojis. (It’s okay, you can laugh.) “Others, he said, prayed when the race was called on Saturday.” Like Hidalgo, he said Biden’s victory was also theirs.
“We thanked God because he heard our cries,” Lopez told BuzzFeed News. “We were victims of a project that was truly harmful to people’s humanity … We thought we were invisible to the world, but we weren’t to God. We’re overjoyed right now.”
