Trump's border policy takes its toll on Mexico where migrant caravans are turned away
Trump's border policy takes its toll on Mexico where migrant caravans are turned away by overwhelmed locals
https://s2.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/e...-3-.png.cf.jpg Deborah Bonello,The Telegraph 5 hours ago
In the impoverished Mexican town of Tapachula, a short distance from the Guatemalan border, patience is wearing thin. “We’re used to seeing them [migrants] pass through but they didn’t stay before. Now it’s out of control," says Maria at her taco stand.
Business has been dire for her since a squalid migrant camp sprang up a stone's throw away in the town's central plaza - one of many makeshift camps for the thousands stuck between Trump's America and chaos back at home in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
There was a time when caravan after caravan of migrants were welcomed with open arms on their way north. But tightening border controls in the US and a calamitous visa policy in Mexico has triggered an accidental crisis of its own.
The mood has turned so sour in some nearby towns and villages that bands of migrants have been blocked from entering by stretched authorities.
Locals have run out of good will and refugee agencies are warning they are totally overwhelmed.
The mood has turned so sour in some towns and villages where bands of migrants have been blocked from entering Credit: Encarni Pindado“The first caravan that came through was welcomed with food and even mariachis, but now they’re ungrateful,” says, Rosario Hernandez, who lives around the corner from Mexico’s Refugee Commission (COMAR) in Tapachula.
Hundreds of migrants, mostly from Central America, are staying on the pavements outside the agency day and night, waiting to be processed for papers that give them the legal right to stay in Mexico.
Without those, many are afraid of being detained and deported and even kidnapped and killed by criminal gangs and corrupt immigration officials.
Populist-leftist Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO, began his presidency in December last year by expediting humanitarian visas for migrants, in sharp contrast with Trump’s hostile, anti-immigrant rhetoric. But the surge in applications saw a reversal in his policy just two weeks later.
Now AMLO, who has warm relations with Jeremy Corbyn, is trying to keep thousands of migrants in southern states via a new regional visitor visas. The pass limits them to states such as Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo and the Yucatan, which are some of the country’s poorest and will struggle to support this new influx of people. Towns close to Tapachula are already resisting migrants, and local politicians with stretched municipal budgets are stoking xenophobia in cynical efforts to keep migrants at bay.
In Huixtla, less than an hour from Tapachula and on the migrant trail, residents recently tried to stop a large group of migrants from entering the town, tells Father Aiman Vazquez Medina, the priest of the town’s local church.
Children are sleeping in public buildings and streets in overwhelmed towns like Tapachula Credit: Encarni PindadoThe municipal government advised residents to close their businesses to avoid vandalism, and to stay indoors, according to the priest, who showed The Telegraph a video circulated via social media.
“The government has blamed migrants for insecurity since the caravans started – they say it has gotten worst since the migrants arrived but we have always had insecurity here,” said Vazquez.
“There’s no employment in Chiapas – Mexicans have always migrated to the United States from here.”
Across the whole of Mexico, 18,365 people have applied for asylum so far this year – compared to a total of 29,647 for the whole of last year, according to figures supplied by the agency.
Chiapas alone, which borders Guatemala, has received 11,219 applications – compared to a total of 16,643 for the whole of last year.
Heidi Lopez and her two children have been camping out in the central square of the Mexican border city of Tapachula for a month now.
During his election campaign Trump famously described Mexicans as drug traffickers, criminals and rapists Credit: Encarni PindadoFrom the Honduran department of Cortez, she crossed into the country a month ago on the makeshift rafts that ply the Suchiate river crossing from Guatemala, but after a few nights in a local migrant refuge she and other women from Honduras decamped to the city center.
“All the shelters are full, and they’re really dirty.”
Sitting above a stairwell that smelled like a latrine, Heidi lulled her three-year-old to sleep as he pleaded to go to the bathroom.
She was one of hundreds of migrants camped out in the open air, lying around in the tropical heat of Mexico’s south. This is just one of several temporary camps that have formed across the city, some of them outside government immigration agencies.
Trump is widely disliked in Mexico, as much for his immigration policies as for his past comments about the country’s people – during his election campaign he famously described Mexicans as drug traffickers, criminals and rapists.
But AMLO has also cut COMAR’s budget by 20 per cent, even though it is on the frontline of receiving and processing migrants arriving in Mexico.
Andres Ramirez, the head of COMAR, admits that they’re overwhelmed. But he claims the country as a whole, home to more than 130 million people, could absorb the rush of migration.
“It’s still a relatively small number for Mexico,” he said.
A steady stream of migrants have crossed into Mexico spurred on by the success of large migrant caravans last year Credit: Encarni PindadoThere is the perception that the AMLO government is saying one thing but doing another. His government is continuing to detain migrants passing through the country at more or less the same rate as recent years.
Mexico’s National Migration Institute says it apprehended 41,940 migrants since the start of the year - just 5 per cent less than the 44,062 during the same period last year.
“Rather than doubling down on the mass detention and deportation of migrants, Mexico should move forward with its plans to provide more opportunities for migrants to live and work in Mexico,” said Maureen Meyer, director for Mexico and migrant rights at the Washington Office of Latin America, a research organisation.
More shelters, more money and more protocols are currently in the planning within Mexico’s institutional machinery, but meanwhile migrants here will have to make do with very little government help as they wait to be processed and given the papers they need to stay and find work – unless they’re deported.
“They don’t like Hondurans here and they won’t give us work if we have no papers,” says Heidi in Tapachula’s central square.
She and thousands like her will have to continue to camp out and rely on dwindling good will for survival.
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