Margelis Tinoco still gets flustered when she thinks about the comments that appeared online after a video capturing her weeping on a border bridge as President Donald Trump took office went viral.
“Stop all that damn crying.”
“Good, get these out of here.”
“Oh no, the horror of being sent back home to your own people.”
They didn’t know about the months-long journey she had taken with her family fleeing armed guerrillas after her son’s murder. And they seemed to skip over the fact that she waited for an appointment to enter legally through the Biden administration’s CBP One app. Within minutes of Trump’s inauguration, her long-awaited chance to request asylum was canceled.
One year later, Tinoco is still seeking safety. She lives in a refuge for migrants in Mexico but is fearful of going outside. She spends each day in a monotonous loop of hope and melancholy resembling the curvy lines of the mandalas she colors in a book. But she still has her sights set on one day being allowed to legally migrate to the United States.
“All I want is a quiet, stable life,” she said. “I want to work for what I lost.”
Tinoco’s family fled a volatile region of Colombia where tens of thousands of people have been displaced by guerilla groups battling over drug trafficking routes near the border with Venezuela. The couple had eight children, but one by one, it felt like they were losing them to a conflict beyond their control. In 2019, one of her sons was killed. The family moved, but the violence followed them. As their children became adults, they sought safety elsewhere.
By the summer of 2024, Tinoco said, she had run out of options.
A friend in the United States offered to help. And the Biden administration was giving would-be asylum seekers the opportunity to request an appointment with officials at the border instead of crossing illegally. The Department of Homeland Security aimed for the app to bring order to the border and remove some of the perils for migrants waiting in long lines in Mexico.
Tinoco, 50, her husband and their youngest son traversed thousands of miles by boat, foot and bus and were kidnapped twice by the time they reached Mexico City. Then they waited to secure an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. She said they didn’t want to hide in the U.S. the way they had to in their homeland.
After five months, they got a date and a time: Jan. 20 at 1:30 p.m., El Paso local time.
Two days before the appointment, Tinoco boarded a plane for the first time. Mexico’s government gave her permission to travel from the capital to Ciudad Juárez on the northern border. She dreamed of walking across the Paso del Norte International Bridge and breathing the U.S.A. deep into her lungs, she said. Tinoco pulled on a knit cap and poncho and fleece gloves she bought for that brisk morning, eager to take her place in line.
Trump was sworn in at noon. A cascade of appointment cancellations swiftly followed.
When Tinoco realized her chances of entering the United States had been dashed, she buried her hands in her face and cried.
“¡Ay Dios mio! ¿Ay Dios, porque?” she wept. “Oh my God! My God, why?”
As her sobs grew louder and more breathless, she crouched down and shook her head in disbelief.
The month that followed was one of the darkest of her life. They found refuge inside the whitewashed walls of the church-run shelter, but they were in debt and alone.
“It was hard getting over the fact that we finally saw a light in the darkness,” she said, “and all of sudden, it just went out.”
But there was still life to live. Her son enrolled in school. Her husband found a job bashing concrete for a demolition crew at a pauper’s wage — arduous labor at any age, but particularly taxing at 52. She took charge of the shelter’s kitchen and began introducing Colombian staples for the international diners. The couple also renovated the shelter interior by laying down new tile, painting the rooms and organizing the space where Sunday services were held. Tinoco dared to accept her circumstances.
One day, someone gifted her a handful of unfamiliar seeds. Tinoco was not sure what they were when she buried them in the soil along with peppers and beets. When the plants produced fruit and a strange stalk didn’t recognize, Tinoco thought something had gone wrong. She pulled out the green foliage and saw tiny half-grown potatoes on the end. The sight of the immature tubers hit something deep inside, and she cried.
“Its time had not come,” she said. “It was growing but underground, where no one could see it.”
Each daily task brought purpose if also respite from despair. Tinoco has been too afraid to venture much outside. Mexico, she had learned, is not always kind to foreigners. Migrants, with their accents and sometimes darker skin tones, stick out for would-be kidnappers and abusers. They are magnets for exploitation by service providers such as taxis and hotel managers. Local police also routinely detain foreigners to send them to southern Mexico. As the year wore on, disappointed migrants like her began leaving for somewhere else.
And then a new population arrived: deportees.
She said they shared horror stories about how their lives had shattered as Trump’s deportation dragnet intensified. They told of masked agents yelling orders and detention centers where guards pressured them to sign papers.
Hearing those tales, Tinoco suddenly remembered the prayer she had recited before boarding the plane to the border: If this trip is for our good, open the door, she recalled whispering. But if it is not, close the door.
“And look, that’s what happened. He closed it,” she said. Tinoco said she came to the realization during a Sunday sermon weeks later. Maybe, she thought, their time hadn’t come for a reason. Maybe they had been saved.
Mexico is not the family’s final destination but Tinoco said they can’t afford other options. Traveling to Europe to seek asylum requires money for flights they don’t have. Traveling to Mexico City to renew their passports could be dangerous and costly. They’ve paid off the debts incurred from their journey but are no better financially than they were a year ago. Going home is not possible, she said.
She is discouraged by how the United States has closed its doors to asylum seekers. But destiny, she says, still points her north.
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