Mexico suits his new suit as a gendarme of the south. The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, He made a positive balance and described as “successful” and “well applied” the plan implemented in the last six months to stop the Central American migration that the United States is trying to reach.
The data disseminated by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, confirm the brutal increase in the arrests and deportations of Central Americans from the southern states of the country. According to Ebrard, from January until Christmas Day 280,000 migrants had been “rescued”, mainly from Honduras (44%), Guatemala (27%) and El Salvador (around 11%). According to the Foreign Ministry, Mexico deported 84,000 people to those countries in the last 12 months. The portal of the Migration Institute (INM), however, states that the deportees were 118,000.
At the same time, in 2019 almost 67,000 applications for refuge were filed with the Comar (the Refugee Assistance Commission) arguing that the applicants’ lives were in danger in their countries of origin. The figure has increased at a rate higher than 300% compared to 2018. Ebrard said that 12,000 unaccompanied children were arrested and that 1,188 children are in the hands of DIF, the agency that takes care of children. The INM website includes figures in this regard that were not released on Wednesday, but reflect the forcefulness of López Obrador’s immigration policy: 50,000 children were arrested this year, of which 37,000 were deported.
The United States welcomes the data that confirm the Mexican effectiveness in the control of the migratory flow. Of the 144,116 arrests made in May by the Border patrol, the border patrol between Mexico and the United States, was passed to 52,000 in November. Since López Obrador deployed the National Guard in Chiapas, the number of Central American migrants arriving in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico or California has dropped at a rate close to 25% per month.
The joint conference of the president and his chancellor during the “morning” conference on Wednesday was, in fact, a message for Donald Trump. The US president threatened his southern neighbors in May with monitoring immigration control and demanding results monthly under penalty of imposing a monthly rate of 5% on Mexican imports. The measures taken at the southern border were the results of that “Threat” “unilateral”, admitted López Obrador.
The Mexican Executive made an effort to put its best face to the strategy of the swallow it imposed by Donald Trump and that did not fit into his plans. In fact, the arrival of López Obrador to power was accompanied by an open door policy. A migrant caravan In December 2018, she was received by hundreds of volunteers who immediately offered health, employment, education and humanitarian assistance to the thousands who entered the country in a hug. In parallel, an employment and development plan was designed in the countries of origin and in the southern part of Mexico.
Twelve months later, only the willows remain. The entrance doors are more armored than ever with the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops and the humanitarian route that contemplated the request for asylum and refuge is stuck between repression and bureaucracy. The Comar has only resolved 3% of the 66,000 applications and this 2020 will operate with half the budget this year.
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The hostels criticize the “militarization” of the border and the implementation of a policy “Servile” with the United States. “In the last year people have died in shelters and in migratory stations. African migrants have been attacked and children of pregnant mothers have died. There have even been shipwrecks on the coast of Chiapas, “says Lapa, director of the Fray Matías Human Rights Center from Tapachula.
“The government recognizes that arrests and deportations have increased and many others are waiting in crowded immigration stations. Doing all this without violating Human Rights would be almost impossible. There is no criticism of the Human Rights Commission because it is extremely inefficient and has a clear political ceiling, ”says Lacruz from the border with Guatemala.
Foreign Minister Ebrard defended in his morning appearance that the Government “complies with Mexican law”, since every person in Mexican territory “must be registered.” “The offer made by Mexico is not made by any country in the world, because the first thing it is offered to the migrant in Mexico, “said the chancellor. However, something is wrong with these plans. Only 3,500 people have signed up for the official job bank, that is, 1.25% of those arrested.
From Tenosique, in the southern state of Tabasco, Ramón Márquez, director of the migrant shelter 72 denounces that “the immigration plan has had a clear repressive approach”. “This translates into more operations, more people moving clandestinely and more people exposed to more dangerous routes and coyotes, who have doubled their rates,” he denounces.
For its part, Lacruz insists that a “containment” immigration policy has been implemented without taking into account “that Mexico is a destination country that requires infrastructure and means to address the humanitarian crisis” that is lived in the south and in the Northern Triangle of Central America, the result of violence and droughts. “It is paradoxical that there is money to pay 6,000 soldiers deployed at the border but not to expand the Comar by ten or twelve people, which works overflowing and does not even have money for translators now that there is also a significant number of Africans trapped at the borders “
While López Obrador’s team tries to convince the international community to support their Marshall plan regionally, the countries involved look the other way. At the same time, international organizations face exhausted the challenge and with the economic resources to the limit, consumed by the Venezuelan exodus, from where more than four million people have left for neighboring countries. At least for now, the most satisfied with the data known yesterday is Donald Trump.
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