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MEXICO-US-MIGRANTS
Going gets tougher for US-bound migrants amid Mexico curbs
ARRIAGA, Mexico, April 28, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Traveling through Mexico has
become even more difficult for Central American migrants like Oscar Vialta
and his family, frustrated by tighter immigration rules and a local
population reluctant to give them shelter or support as they move toward the
United States to try to improve their lives.
Vialta, 42, his wife and two children left Honduras at the beginning of
April, joining a migrant caravan heading for the US border.
But when they arrived in Mexico, they ran foul of stiffer new regulations
which have restricted them to Mexico’s southern states and prevented them
from going further north to the border.
Their only legal hope is to be given a humanitarian visa.
“It would let us work and move on,” says a frustrated Vialta, “but when we
arrived they gave us the runaround and all we got was lies.”
He and his family are waiting by the railway tracks in the southern town
of Arriaga, planning to hitch a ride on a freight train known as “The Beast”.
Jumping on a freight train is many migrants’ means of getting north to the
US border, despite the risks of falling off. Some have been mutilated by the
wheels as they tried to clamber aboard.
Another hazard is encountering criminal gangs who prey on vulnerable
migrants. Dozens have been kidnapped and murdered by suspected drug gangs who
were trying to recruit them.
Since October, tens of thousands of Central Americans and Cubans have
traversed Mexico in so-called “caravans” in the hope of obtaining sanctuary
in the United States.
Under pressure to do more to curb the mass movement of migrants through
its territory, Mexico has tightened a previously open-doors policy.
But that has posed its own problems. On Thursday, at least 1,300 mainly
Cuban migrants broke out of a detention center in southern Chiapas state and
set fire to the facility in protest at overcrowding.
Around 700 returned soon after to the shelter in Tapachula because they
had nowhere else to go, but around 600 are still at large.
US President Donald Trump says the migrants are a threat to US national
security and has demanded that Mexico detain them and send them home.
– ‘The migra’s coming’-
Waiting for that elusive humanitarian visa is not the Vialta family’s only
problem. They must be prepared to up and run at a moment’s notice, wary of
swoops by Mexico’s National Institute of Migration Police — the “migras.”
The Vialtas has a narrow escape last week when they just managed to evade
one such raid, in which more than 300 migrants were rounded up.
“When we saw them, they were almost on top of us, and we managed to get
ourselves into a field,” he said. Now, he says, they will seek the cover of
the woods and fields, away from main roads, to avoid immigration agents.
Jose Vallecillo, 41, lives with the same fear. Traveling with his wife and
daughter, he says the attitude of Mexicans towards migrants has changed.
“We’ve been disappointed. Because the truth is that we are human beings,
and migrating is not a crime. You migrate not expecting to do great things
but just to make your life a little better,” he said.
– ‘No support’ –
In October of last year, when the first caravans of migrants traveled
through Mexico, migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and beyond
felt a surge of popular solidarity from Mexicans. Now that seems to have
disappeared, in line with a tougher official stance.
“The government of each state put combis, buses, the communities supported
us with clothes, shoes, food,” said Luis Antonio Lopez, a 42-year-old
Nicaraguan migrant who was among thousands to join the first caravans last
year. Today, he’s still trying to reach the United States.
“Now you don’t see that. We don’t have the support of either the people or
the police,” he says as he waits for “The Beast”.
Most migrants want to reach the United States because they argue that high
levels of violence and poverty are making life impossible in their own
countries.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1255 hrs