Mexico reshaping approach to Central American migrants as caravans push north
Mexico reshaping approach to Central American migrants as caravans push north
Sandra Dibble Contact Reporter
The caravans of Central Americans currently traveling northward through Mexico are but the “tip of the iceberg” of a massive and unseen flow of migrants at Mexico’s southern border from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, said a high-ranking appointee in the incoming administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“The caravans are not the problem,” said Tonatiuh Guillén López, who will take over as head of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, known as INAMI, when the new administration takes office on Dec. 1. “The issue is the movements we do not see, those who are not in the caravan, that is the big issue.”
President Donald Trump, angered by the thousands of Central Americans making their way in large caravans to the U.S. border, has been pushing Mexico to step up enforcement efforts. But Mexico’s incoming president is championing a different approach: to invest in impoverished areas of Central America and southern Mexico so that people don’t feel forced to leave.
“The central question is what is being done so that people have opportunities at home,” Guillén said in an interview last week in Tijuana. “You can’t manage these movements if at the same time you don’t have a development program, these have to go hand in hand.”
The caravans have put the spotlight on the rising numbers of Central Americans who are fleeing communities that are beset by poverty and rampant violence.
“If we don’t come up with development initiatives based on international cooperation, and we don’t confront the problem of Honduras and its crisis, we’re going to have the same cycle, each time more amplified,” Guillén said.
The numbers are reaching levels not seen for more than a decade, said Ernesto Rodríguez Chávez, a migration scholar at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a government-funded think tank with offices along the northern border and Mexico City.
His estimates put the current annual flow of undocumented crossings from Central America to the United States through Mexico at between 350,000 and 400,000; the calculations consider crossings, rather than people, as some individuals may cross more than once. Much of the traffic takes place out of sight, at night, in smaller flows, Rodríguez said, to escape the attention of Mexican migration authorities.
Rodríguez said that compared with the earlier flows, the current exodus includes a rise in the proportion of women and particularly children, though male migrants continue to make up the largest proportion of those attempting to reach the United States.
Many don’t make it to the U.S. border, as Mexican authorities detain tens of thousands each year. INAMI reported through September 2018 nearly 80,000 deportations from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, with close to half from Honduras.
Still, the hardening of the U.S. border means that growing numbers of Central Americans are opting to stay in Mexico, and this poses a challenge for Mexico’s new president, who has vowed to respect human rights and and promote social welfare.
“Mexico has always seen itself as a transit country and not a receiving country for migrants,” said Eric Olson, a senior adviser at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. “But the reality seems that more and more Central Americans are settling in Mexico. What kind of policy is Mexico going to adopt to make sure that those people settling in Mexico are going to receive the protections they deserve?”
As he prepares to assume the presidency, López Obrador has said he will offer work permits to Central Americans in Mexico, and is asking the collaboration of the United States and Canada to invest in southern Mexico and Central America as a means to stem migration.
“This is not a problem that can be confronted only with the use of force, with coercive measures, human rights must be guaranteed,” he said last month during a stop in Chiapas.
López Obrador’s approach of investing in the communities that so many are fleeing “is the right long-term approach to stop out-migration, but it’s unlikely to have much effect in the short-term,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
With the Trump administration’s pressure to immediately stop the northbound flow, and López Obrador’s focus on getting to the root causes, the path forward will not be easy.
Trump has pressed for Mexico to accept a “safe third country agreement” to require asylum seekers who are transiting through Mexico to apply there rather than the United States, but the incoming Mexican administration has signaled no interested in such an accord.
“Mexico would have no reason to do this,” Guillén said.
“We all need to share responsibility. Mexico already is receiving large numbers of Central Americans and the main issue is that we need to move forward in a regional approach.”
Guillén will be one of a handful of players involved in crafting and carrying out the incoming administration’s immigration policies. His agency is staffed by 5,800 employees who carry out a wide range of roles — from citizenship services to migrant protection to border enforcement.
An academic, Guillén brings a different profile to an agency whose leadership in recent years has come from the intelligence and law enforcement communities, and has been criticized by human rights groups and migrant advocates for its opaque bureaucracy that fostered corruption and abuses against migrants.
Guillén has spoken out against the use of force last month by Mexican Federal Police at the southern border against members of the first Central American caravan who were pushing through, calling it a “serious error.”
INAMI, “has not been as professional an agency as it needs to be, and it’s just a basic institutional challenge in creating a modern immigration agency out of what has been a second thought for the Mexican government,” Selee said.
As Mexico increasingly becomes a destination for Central American migrants, “this implies changes in the regulations, and above all in the operations” of Mexico's immigration agency, said Rodríguez of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte.
A social scientist by training, Guillén has specialized in the study of public administration and for many years was based in Tijuana, where he rose to become president of the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. When his term ended last year, he transferred to a public research center in Mexico City, Centro Geo, heading up an ambitious project involving 91 researchers and 36 subject areas focused on Mexico’s southern border.
“Mexico’s border with Guatemala has ceased to be a traditional border, one mostly involving the mobility of indigenous groups, small transactions and economies mainly tied to Guatemala,” he said.
“The cross-border labor market is enormous...this is not just a labor market, but about many other things, culture, social structure, services,” he said. “An economy grows, commerce grows, and you’ve created a region, the Mexico-Guatemala region.”
The new administration is also thinking beyond the southern border, envisioning development programs in areas of Central America that many have been fleeing — programs that could be supported by a coalition of countries, including Mexico, the United States, Canada and members of the European community.
While the vision is toward large long-term solutions, Guillén said the first step can be through pilot projects in the emigrating communities.
“We can start with five in Honduras, and two in Guatemala and El Salvador,” he said. “We have to start, and if we don’t, we’re going to continue to have these problems, but worse.”
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