The US changes the funnel and intensifies the risk for migrants from Mexico

2023-05-13 06:46:44

Migrants remain on the other side of the Rio Grande, next to the metal wall installed by the United States between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, in tents or makeshift shelters with blankets hung from barbed wire that the Texas National Guard has placed. Image: Rey R. Jáuregui / La Verdad-Footnote

MEXICO – In the northern Mexican cities of Ciudad Juárez, Matamoros and Reynosa, on the US border, thousands of undocumented men, women and children crowd into makeshift shelters and camps waiting for an opportunity to cross to the other side.

The situation occurs when the temporary application of Title 42, part of a 1944 law that allows migration control to protect public health, came to an end on Thursday night. Based on the covid-19 pandemic, decreed in March 2020, The United States used the standard for almost three years to expel undocumented immigrants immediately.

As a replacement, Washington will use from this Friday the 12th Title 8, which was already in force and which allows the rapid expulsion of migrants who enter the United States irregularly and the ban on entry for five years. By Title 42, The United States carried out 2.78 million expulsions since 2020.

Mexico faces this new dark phase of the crisis of its migration policy between uncertainty and lack of clarity in the adaptation policies towards the lifting of a measure applied for 40 months and the hardened application of another for those who manage to cross a 3,200-kilometer border .

“The Mexican government has challenges in serving the non-Mexican population and what services it provides to its own compatriots. There will be a lack of services, many concerns, such as kidnapping and sexual violence. We are going to continue to see many people arriving, without the necessary services”: Maureen Meyer.

For Maureen Meyer, Vice President of Programs at the non-governmental Washington Office for Latin America (Wola), based in Washington, this new episode is the reinforced repetition of migratory dynamics at the border.

“The Mexican government has challenges in serving the non-Mexican population and what services it provides to its own compatriots. There will be a lack of services, many concerns, such as kidnapping and sexual violence. We are going to continue to see many people arriving without the necessary services,” he told IPS from the US capital.

In his opinion, “the question is what will happen, there are many questions about what the Mexican government is going to do.”

The Secretariat (Ministry) of Foreign Affairs said which was preparing consular assistance along the border division for the affected Mexican population.

With the suppression of Title 42, applied since 2020, the United States can expel any undocumented migrant who lacks a credible reason to request asylum and remain in that country. In the image, people without papers wait for food in a shelter in the northern Mexican city of Tijuana, on the border with the United States. Image: Duilio Rodríguez / Under the Boot Project

A group of non-governmental organizations sent on May 9 a letter to the government to request a definition of actions before the cessation of Title 42, without the authorities having clarified any point about the measures to be adopted.

Since 2019, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in December of the previous year, has used migrants as bargaining chips to negotiate on energy, political, and environmental matters with the United States, first with President Donald Trump (2016- 2020) and then with his successor, Joe Biden.

“(The end of Title 42) It also implies that people seek more dangerous routes and an increase in trafficking (in persons), of being victims of organized crime, kidnapping, extortion. And ask for asylum without needing to want it”: Sandra Álvarez.

Both countries, partners with Canada in the Mexico, United States, and Canada (T-MEC) trade agreement, maintain serious divergences on energy, labor, and environmental issues.

Based on that strategy and accepting one request after another from the White House, Mexico has become an insecure recipient of migrants from other countries.

The Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States, Paul Mayorkas, said on Thursday the 11th that the border is closed and that they will deport anyone who tries to enter to request asylum without a prior application approved by Internet or justified cause.

After several meetings of Mexican officials with their US counterparts, López Obrador announced the same Thursdaywhile a wave of migrants waited on the Mexican side for the end of Title 42, which will send more soldiers to the border with Guatemala, in a repetition of the border tightening that occurred a decade ago.

Some 25,000 Mexican soldiers already participate in border surveillance, according to figures from organizations that defend people without papers, especially on the border with Guatemala.

Mexico facilitates the passage of migrants through humanitarian visas, knowing that they are going to run into the United States border fence in the north and that it has caused the collapse of migration infrastructure, such as humanitarian shelters and detention centers.

But none of the measures applied since at least 2020 have slowed down human mobility, much less the Mexican rhetoric of scholarships, economic support and subsidies for planting trees in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as López Obrador preaches.

“Migrating is not a crime,” reads a makeshift sign on a fence in Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez, where migrants hope to enter the United States through one of the border posts. Image: Footer

As they pass through Mexico, the undocumented suffer mistreatment, robbery, discrimination, kidnapping and extortion by criminal groups, in collusion with police, military and immigration agents.

Meanwhile, the Undersecretary of the Office of Population, Refugees and Migration of the United States, Julieta Valls Noyes, prepare a visit to Mexico from May 17 to 19.

tragedy in real time

The statistics show the dimension of the existing migratory crisis. During the first three months of 2023, Mexico had stopped to 111,505 undocumented immigrants, a quarter of the total for 2022.

Venezuela has been the biggest contributor to that listwith 19,944 migrants in an irregular condition, followed by Ecuador (14,883) and Guatemala (13,349), in a demonstration of the emergence of new generators of human flows that displace historical actors, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Of the 444,439 captured in 2022, 97,078 came from Venezuela, 72,928 from Honduras and 69,515 from Guatemala, according to the numbers officers.

Mexico also maintains the expulsive machinerysince in 2022 it deported 106,008 people, of which 44,959 arrived from Guatemala, 40,700 from Honduras and 5,003 from Cuba.

At the end of March, returns this year they totaled 21,758, including 9,375 Guatemalans, 7,168 Hondurans, and 1,836 Ecuadorians.

Dozens of migrants crowd before a border post in the Mexican Ciudad Juárez, waiting to be able to cross into the United States, given the misleading information that the end of the application of Title 42 would facilitate their reception in that country. Image: Vianey Alderete Contreras / La Verdad-Footer

Sandra Álvarez, director of the non-governmental Without Bordersforesaw a massive increase in people seeking asylum in the United States on both borders, especially the northern one, with the United States.

The elimination of Title 42 “also implies that people seek more dangerous routes and an increase in trafficking (in persons), being victims of organized crime, kidnapping and extortion. And request asylum without wanting to,” he alerted IPS.

In recent years, detention and deportation of undocumenteds from the United States has grown, since in 2015 it apprehended 596,560 people and in 2021, 1.87 million.

The Mexican detained population went from 307,535 in 2018 to 695,582 people in 2021, the highest level in a decade. The arrest of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans has grown since 2017 and in 2021 totaled 293,954, 104,586, and 331,397, respectively.

to the expectation

While the new episode of the immigration tragedy progresses, the organizations that defend the undocumented are considering their options to face the situation.

Wola’s Meyer insisted on addressing the causes of migration from both nations.

The United States has deported thousands of undocumented immigrants of various nationalities and has used Mexico as a temporary destination or bridge, such as the plane that transferred migrants to the southern city of Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, in 2022. Image: Duilio Rodríguez / Project Under the Boot

“It is necessary to make the situation of refugee applicants visible, monitor changes in Mexican immigration control policies, efforts to protect and provide services to this population on the northern border, and impunity for human rights violations,” he stated.

For his part, Álvarez, from Sin Fronteras, called for not criminalizing migration.

“The most affected are people on the move. It is necessary to define the responsibility of States, depending on whether they are countries of origin, transit and destination. Although each State can decide who admits, it is subject to international standards. The subject must be attacked in depth, with preventive approaches and direct co-responsibility between countries”, he proposed.

ED: EG