Nicaraguan Benjamín Villalta could not believe that an immigration office opened its doors in the middle of the morning to issue him and 40 other migrants humanitarian visas that would allow them to work and move freely through Mexico for a year.
“They took the data from us and it took us half an hour at most,” the 39-year-old Central American who had joined one of the caravans that recently left Tapachula, along with Guatemala, excitedly explained to The Associated Press and accepted the offer to separate from the group to be transferred from the south of Veracruz to San Luis Potosí, in the north-central part of the country, and regularize their situation.
The measure, which just over a month ago would have seemed like a utopia, represents a change in strategy after more than two years of containing migrants and is part of the Mexican government’s attempt to readjust its immigration management.
It also came shortly before the announcement of the reestablishment of the “Remain in Mexico” program by which asylum seekers in the United States will again have to wait for their process in Mexican territory, as during the administration of Donald Trump.
Both plans are the result of attempts by the two governments to ease pressure on their borders. Mexico tries to relieve the massive concentration of migrants in Tapachula and neutralize the caravans that have recently left this city.
With “Remain in Mexico,” a policy that Joe Biden paralyzed but has been forced to reintroduce to comply with a court order, Trump sought to discourage migrants from crossing into the United States by returning them to some of the Mexican cities with the most cartel violence. .
The plan launched by the Mexican government in the south is to move migrants to other states and deliver humanitarian visas there “in an expeditious and orderly manner,” said the National Migration Institute (INM).
The measure provides hope for the tens of thousands of migrants who are stranded in Tapachula, a kind of open-air migration jail according to some non-governmental organizations. But its effects are still uncertain because although some migrants aspire to settle in Mexico and many others are determined to continue to the United States.
For a week around 3,000 people, most of them Haitians, have camped under the trees and in the parking lot of the Tapachula football stadium, waiting to get on one of the buses that are arriving, although you never know when.
“I want to go to another city to look for work, because if I don’t work, how am I going to pay the rent, how am I going to buy food, children’s clothes?” Said Haitian Edwine Varin while protecting herself from the sun with a sheet with her husband and son.
Some had been summoned there by immigration agents. Others joined as word spread.
“We were passing by on the bus because we were going to surrender to immigration and we saw the crowd and got off right here,” explained a Venezuelan who only wanted to identify himself as Jeferson and who crossed all of Central America with his mother.
The place became a rush of people, some leaving, others arriving. The lack of order and information led the migrants themselves to draw up lists with shifts that did not always work, and the complaints began: some chose to start walking while waiting to be treated earlier, others to make roadblocks to demand more agile transfers.
The INM called for calm and specified that “it has sufficient personnel and transport units for an orderly and safe transfer” but did not respond to an AP request to know how many migrants have been benefited by this measure.
Mexico has recently accelerated the search for alternatives to order the growing migratory flow that arrives in the country, which crosses it and the thousands of migrants who are returned daily from the United States due to the measures put in place since the pandemic.
Refunds will increase as of Monday, when “Remain in Mexico” restarts, although for asylum seekers under this program the Mexican government achieved some advantages such as the United States vaccinating them against COVID-19 and supporting their accommodation in places insurance.
Mexico, for its part, has overflowed its own refugee system with more than 123,000 requests so far this year compared to more than 70,000 in 2019, according to official data.
Most of them were registered in Tapachula, the city of oppressive heat with the largest immigration detention center in Latin America, where its little more than 350,000 inhabitants have been added in recent years by tens of thousands of foreigners who crowd shelters, squares and parks and migrants do not stop arriving.
Unemployment, poor living conditions and the lack of an official response to their procedures caused many to leave again in caravans starting in August, the first of which were dissolved with excessive use of force, according to the UN.
Others left more discreetly and in September, almost without anyone noticing, thousands of Haitians had stationed themselves in a secluded corner of the Texas border, putting Mexican and US authorities in check. Haitians have been the leading nationality in asylum applications in the country since October with more than 47,000.
Mexico is finalizing a decree to offer other alternatives for regularization to Haitians but, for now, the only tangible movement is the offers of transfer and immediate visas to those in the south.
The figures may not be very high but for Tonatiuh Guillen, who led the Institute during the first months of the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “it is a very significant change when compared to the confrontation that the caravans had a few years ago. months with the National Guard and the very severe control experiences faced by migrants and refugees ”.
Others criticize the lack of planning. “It is an improvised reaction of the INM, they have people in complete disinformation and consider that they can move them as merchandise,” lamented Enrique Vidal Olascoaga, a lawyer at the Fray Matías de Córdova center, a non-governmental organization that serves migrants in Tapachula.
Father César Cañaveral, head of migration for the Catholic Church in this city, agreed with the lawyer that the current one is not a lasting solution. When these permits were issued in early 2019, following the huge caravans of late 2018, the migrants were returned to Tapachula when their visas expired and were no longer renewed.
In addition, the group of organizations that make up the Southern Border Monitoring Collective recalled that during 2021 they have detected cases of migrants who have been detained and returned to Tapachula even with humanitarian visas and others were abandoned in remote points of the border with Guatemala without more explanations.
However, achieving a legal stay is synonymous with joy. Josué Madariaga, a 28-year-old from Honduras who was traveling with Villalta, got it last week. From San Luis Potosí he traveled on his own to the northern city of Monterrey and already works in a market. “They told me that with my credential they accepted me with insurance and everything!” He explained proudly.
Giovanni Lepri, representative in Mexico of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, considered that the new official strategy is on the right track but opted to connect those who seek employment with the companies that offer it before the transfers. “If we coordinate well, something positive could come out: the stabilization of a population that is on the move and that in Mexico could find an option.”
Yet many keep their eyes on the United States.
Villalta, like most of the group that arrived in San Luis Potosí, went from there to Monterrey and then reached a corner of Baja California with Arizona.
Upon learning of the re-implementation of the “Remain in Mexico” program, he rushed across the border. He called his mother, walked to the United States, and when he saw the Border Patrol, he knelt with his hands up to surrender.
He trusted that the documents he was carrying and which, supposedly, prove that he was tortured and that he is a victim of the Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega, would serve him to request international protection in the United States before that country began to return asylum seekers to Mexico.
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