From El Paso and Ciudad Juárez to San Diego and Tijuana, migrants were massing Thursday along some sections of the U.S.-Mexico border in a last attempt to cross into the United States in the hours before the pandemic-era health rule known as Title 42 ends.

Migrants who have traveled from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Central American fear that it could be harder for them to stay on U.S. soil once the restrictions are lifted.

Here are some of the scenes playing out along the 1,950 mile (3,140 km) international boundary:

María José Durán, a 24-year-old student from Venezuela, was on the verge of tears as she sat on a riverbank in Matamoros, Mexico.

Mexican immigration officials were trying to move migrants back to an improvised camp and away from a spot where they could wade across the Rio Grande.

Durán said she dropped out of college when her parents could no longer afford it and set out for the U.S. with a group of friends and relatives. They crossed the treacherous Darien Gap dividing Colombia and Panama and then a half-dozen more countries before arriving at the U.S. border.

“I don’t know what to think now, having made such a difficult journey to now find ourselves with this,” she said, motioning toward the opposite shore where at least a dozen Texas state troopers with rifles stood behind concertina wire.

Later, Durán could be seen walking along the levee with other migrants who had crossed the Rio Grande and passed the barbed wire.

Hundreds of migrants lined up next to the border wall in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, were still crossing over Thursday morning and being received by the U.S. Border Patrol on the other side. The numbers were notably lower than in recent days.

Ecuadorians Washington Javier Vaca and his wife, Paulina Congo, along with their two children, ages 14 and 7, knew nothing about the change in rules.

“And now will it be better or worse for us?” asked Congo. “We asked for asylum in Mexico and after four months they denied us.”

A Salvadoran man who gave his name as David moved away from the border and back into Ciudad Juárez for fear of being deported.

Smugglers helped Guatemalan Sheidi Mazariegos and her 4-year-old son get to Matamoros, Mexico, where she and the child crossed the Rio Grande on a raft.

But U.S. Border Patrol agents took the pair into custody a week ago near Brownville, Texas. On Thursday, the 26-year-old and her son arrived back in Guatemala on one of two flights carrying a total of 387 migrants.

“I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter,” said Mazariegos. “I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie.”

Aylin Guevara, 45, hurried her steps as she walked through the scorching desert of Ciudad Juarez toward the border.

She was accompanied by her two children, ages 16 and 5, and her husband. The family fled their coastal city in Colombia after receiving death threats and hoped to seek refuge in the U.S.

After spending the previous night in a hotel, they were eager to get to the border — “to get in and go with the help of God and baby Jesus,” Guevara said.

But less than a day before the end of Title 42, when they arrived, a U.S. immigration officer said they could not pass.

“Not anymore, it’s over,” he told them in a firm voice, instructing them to go to bridges 10 miles (16 kilometers) to their left or right.

On a stretch of border wall in Tijuana, migrants asked passersby for blankets, food and water as the sun set over a steep hill.

Gerson Aguilera, 41, got to Tijuana around 4 p.m. with his three kids and wife to make a go at crossing and ask for asylum. From Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Aguilera said he and his family fled after organized criminals started demanding he pay twice the extortion money he was already paying of 2,000 Honduran lempira (roughly $81) a week.

“It’s very hard. For a payment, they will kill you,” Aguilera said with tears in his eyes.

The owner of a welding shop, Aguilera said he left his home once before in 2020 because of threats, but returned when things calmed down. That wasn’t an option anymore.

“We ask that God helps us,” Aguilar said.

Associated Press journalists Gerardo Carrillo in Matamoros, Mexico; Maria Verza, in Ciudad Juarez; and Sonia Perez D. in Guatemala City contributed to this report.