In Texas, the city of El Paso extended an emergency declaration over the weekend as temperatures plunged into the teens and shelters reached capacity. The declaration came as hundreds of migrants spent the Christmas holiday outdoors on the Mexican side of the border despite freezing temperatures. They were unable to cross to the U.S. to seek asylum after the Supreme Court last week ordered the Biden administration to continue the Trump-era Title 42 policy, which has been used to expel some 2 million people from the border. This is a Venezuelan asylum seeker speaking from Ciudad Juárez on Christmas Eve.

Franyer Chavez: “I would like to spend Christmas in a place where it is not cold. I would really like to have shelter, just as everyone here would like to spend Christmas under a roof, because the cold is strong.”