◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek March 8, 202138
ILLUSTRATION BY PATRIK MOLLWINGgot too sick. Of the hundreds evacuated from the
camp, the UN says, zero tested positive for Covid.
Maybe it was the open air or toughened population
that kept coronavirus out, Perry says. Alonso notes,
“It’s like we miraculously developed some kind of
herd immunity.”
Biden may be bringing an end to the trau-
matic limbo these asylum seekers have endured
for almost 18 months. But there’s still a long way
to go. There are about 25,000 more people in the
Remain in Mexico program, with a few thousand
spread across the length of the U.S. border with
Mexico. From Feb. 19 to March 2, the U.S. govern-
ment processed more than 850 people entering
from Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Matamoros.
Not all of the migrants at Matamoros are actively
registered in MPP. Some have inactive status and
others aren’t part of the program. The Department
of Homeland Security said in a statement on
Feb. 24 that the agency “will work in partnership
with the Government of Mexico, and partners on
the ground, to facilitate the safe processing of cur-
rent camp residents who qualify for [MPP]. New
arrivals to the Matamoros camp will not gain entry
into the United States through this limited process.”
Those enrolled in MPP can register on a UN web-
site and will be told where and when to show up for
Covid testing and processing. Homeland Security,
stressing that the border is closed, has instructed
people not to approach unless they are summoned
as it winds down MPP. It’s not clear how the U.S.
will handle people who come to the U.S.-Mexico
border in the future intent on seeking asylum.
In the meantime, those departing Matamoros
make the short walk in groups across the bridge
to the U.S. From there, they get onto buses and
ride a few blocks to the Brownsville bus station.
They have a chance to speak with an attorney, and
volunteers with church and activist groups are on
hand to help them, says Cindy Andrade Johnson,
a Brownsville resident and volunteer. Some imme-
diately head to where their sponsors live. Johnson
says groups and individuals have raised money for
the costs of those who must wait to travel on.
For Francisco Caal, at least, the stress and fear of
living in limbo is ending. Onelia Alonso can say the
same: She was also part of the first group allowed
into the U.S. Now they face more uncertainty as
they wait for a date to go before a federal immigra-
tion judge to argue their case for asylum. The judge
could tell them no; he or she could order them
deported back to the danger they faced at home.
Caal wasn’t thinking much about all that
as he and Trujillo sat inside the bus station in
Brownsville. They were headed to La Grange,THE BOTTOM LINE The U.S. has admitted hundreds of asylum
seekers from a Mexican border camp in a tangible reversal of one
of Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.Kentucky, where Trujillo’s brother lives and will
take them in. He had no idea where life would take
them in the U.S. But he wasn’t too worried.
“OK, I have no money, and don’t really know
what I am going to do, or where I am going,” he
said, smiling. “But we’re in the United States of
America, finally, and that’s really all that mat-
ters.” �Michael Smith and Naureen S. Malik, with
Maya Averbuch● New tax collections enabled by the Supreme
Court are a godsend for pandemic budgetsHow Online Shoppers
Have Kept States Afloat
Rachel Ramos, who sells graphic T-shirts on Etsy
from her home in Fort Worth, was considering clos-
ing her shop before she saw business unexpectedly
boom last May. The shop brought her $25,000 from
May through December, compared with $11,000 the
entire previous year. She’s saving that money to buy
a house for her and her two children. “This kept me
from having to struggle as a single mother,” she says.
A less obvious, indirect recipient of her windfall:
the states where her customers live, which can use
taxes on her T-shirt sales to help plug the holes in
their budgets.
When much of the country went into quarantine
last year, Americans holed up at home took to their
laptops to buy just about everything online, from
groceries to home goods to electronics. As they
drove a surge in online retail, shoppers were also