Migrants in Tijuana spend Christmas far from home

Far from home, migrants stranded at Mexico's northern border, Tijuana, spent Christmas Eve amid nostalgia and uncertainty at whether their dream of reaching the United States will be achieved.

For several, it is their first Christmas away from their loved ones.

Honduran migrant Agusto Martinez, his wife Rosa Aviles and their five children have waited at the Tijuana shelter for more than six months.

The Martínez family did not think they would still be waiting for their immigration papers at this time of year, but they had to spend Christmas at the "Juventud 2000" shelter.

Martinez wants to reunite with the children he left behind when he was deported from the United States twenty years ago.

The revival of the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy to make the asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courts comes as the Biden administration manoeuvres to end it in a way that survives legal scrutiny.

President Joe Biden scrapped the policy, but a lawsuit by Texas and Missouri has forced him to put it back into effect, subject to Mexico's acceptance.

The Mexican government has stopped caravans of walking migrants.

But it has not been able to stop smugglers who pack migrants into trucks in their hundreds, charging them thousands of dollars, to take them to the American borders.