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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Mexico moving migrants away from borders to relieve pressure

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787 days ago
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A migrant woman waits between two border walls hoping to apply for asylum, a day after the Title 42 cut-off, as seen from San Diego, May 12, 2023. Mexico is flying migrants south away from the U.S. border to keep migrants from massing in its border cities. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

A migrant woman waits between two border walls hoping to apply for asylum, a day after the Title 42 cut-off, as seen from San Diego, May 12, 2023. Mexico is flying migrants south away from the U.S. border to keep migrants from massing in its border cities. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

Mex­i­co is fly­ing mi­grants south away from the U.S. bor­der and bus­ing new ar­rivals away from its bound­ary with Guatemala to re­lieve pres­sure on its bor­der cities.

In the week since Wash­ing­ton dropped pan­dem­ic-era re­stric­tions on seek­ing asy­lum at its bor­der, U.S. au­thor­i­ties re­port a dra­mat­ic drop in il­le­gal cross­ing at­tempts. In Mex­i­co, of­fi­cials are gen­er­al­ly try­ing to keep mi­grants south away from that bor­der, a strat­e­gy that could re­duce cross­ing tem­porar­i­ly, but ex­perts say is not sus­tain­able.

The U.S. De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty re­port­ed Fri­day that in the week since the pol­i­cy change, Bor­der Pa­trol av­er­aged 4,000 en­coun­ters a day with peo­ple cross­ing be­tween ports of en­try. That was down dra­mat­i­cal­ly from the more than 10,000 dai­ly av­er­age im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore.

Be­tween the mi­grants who rushed to cross the bor­der in the days be­fore the U.S. pol­i­cy change and Mex­i­co’s ef­forts to move oth­ers to the coun­try’s in­te­ri­or, shel­ters in north­ern bor­der cities cur­rent­ly find them­selves be­low ca­pac­i­ty.

In south­ern Mex­i­co, how­ev­er, shel­ters for mi­grants are full and the gov­ern­ment is bus­ing hun­dreds of mi­grants more than 200 miles north to re­lieve pres­sure in Tapachu­la near Guatemala. The gov­ern­ment has al­so said it de­ployed hun­dreds of ad­di­tion­al Na­tion­al Guard troops to the south last week.

Segis­mun­do Doguín, Mex­i­co’s top im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cial in the bor­der state of Tamauli­pas, across from Texas, said last week that the gov­ern­ment would fly as many mi­grants away from bor­der cities of Reynosa and Mata­moros as nec­es­sary.

The trans­fers were “lat­er­al move­ments to oth­er parts of the coun­try” where there were not so many mi­grants, Doguín said. He called them “vol­un­tary hu­man­i­tar­i­an trans­fers.”

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press con­firmed Mex­i­can flights from Mata­moros, Reynosa and Piedras Ne­gras car­ry­ing mi­grants to the in­te­ri­or over the past week. A Mex­i­can fed­er­al of­fi­cial, who was not au­tho­rized to speak pub­licly but agreed to dis­cuss the mat­ter if not quot­ed by name, said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 mi­grants were be­ing trans­ferred south each day.

Among them were at least some of the 1,100 mi­grants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cu­ba that the U.S. re­turned to Mex­i­co in the week since the pol­i­cy change.

“So, the north­ern part of the mi­grant route is emp­tied out a bit, but the south­ern and mid­dle parts re­main ex­treme­ly full and fill­ing up all the time,” said Adam Isac­son, di­rec­tor for de­fense over­sight and a close ob­serv­er of the bor­der at WOLA, a Wash­ing­ton-based hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tion. “Ob­vi­ous­ly, that’s an equi­lib­ri­um that can’t hold for very long.”

Mex­i­co has moved mi­grants south in the past when there was con­cern about north­ern bor­der cities’ ca­pac­i­ty, but this time there are ad­di­tion­al fac­tors.

While the coun­try’s shel­ters for mi­grants in the south are full, Mex­i­co’s Na­tion­al Im­mi­gra­tion In­sti­tute has closed its small­er mi­grant de­ten­tion cen­tres around the coun­try and has un­der­tak­en a re­view of its large ones af­ter 40 mi­grants died in a fire at a small de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty in the bor­der city of Ciu­dad Juarez in March.

The fed­er­al of­fi­cial said Mex­i­co’s largest im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion cen­tres are most­ly emp­ty. Two oth­er fed­er­al of­fi­cials, who al­so spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said Fri­day that “Siglo XXI,” Mex­i­co’s largest de­ten­tion cen­tre, was emp­ty.

To­natiuh Guil­lén, for­mer head of Mex­i­co’s Na­tion­al Im­mi­gra­tion In­sti­tute, said Mex­i­co’s ac­tions are con­tra­dic­to­ry — on one hand telling the Unit­ed States it will con­tain mi­grants in the south, but on the oth­er de­tain­ing few­er.

One morn­ing this week, sev­er­al hun­dred mi­grants wait­ed on the out­skirts of the south­ern city of Tapachu­la for gov­ern­ment bus­es that would car­ry them to Tuxt­la Gutier­rez some 230 miles north.

Guil­lén said the doc­u­ment Mex­i­co is is­su­ing now to some mi­grants in Tuxt­la Gutier­rez — an ex­pul­sion or­der that gives mi­grants days or a cou­ple of weeks to leave the coun­try — does not give them oth­er op­tions, mak­ing it hard­er for them to seek in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion.

Ed­win Flo­res of Guatemala had been try­ing to get to the U.S. on his own, but when he heard about the gov­ern­ment bus­es from Tapachu­la he de­cid­ed to give it a try.

“They haven’t told us ex­act­ly what per­mit they’re go­ing to give us, on­ly that we have to con­tin­ue the pa­per­work process there in Tuxt­la Gutier­rez,” Flo­res said. Oth­er mi­grants re­port­ed ar­riv­ing there, but not re­ceiv­ing any doc­u­ment.

“We have heard on the news about all the changes to the law they have made, and the mas­sive de­por­ta­tions from the Unit­ed States,” Flo­res said. But it didn’t change his plans, “be­cause the goal is to ar­rive and see for your­self what is hap­pen­ing.”

He said he want­ed to get an ap­point­ment with U.S. au­thor­i­ties to make his case for asy­lum. He said he was a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty guard in Guatemala and gangs tried to re­cruit him as their eyes in the street.

On Wednes­day, the Unit­ed Na­tions refugee agency in Mex­i­co said it was wor­ried about the pres­sure on mi­grant shel­ters in south­ern Mex­i­co and Mex­i­co City. “In ad­di­tion to the peo­ple ar­riv­ing from the south, some shel­ters have al­ready re­ceived Venezue­lans de­port­ed from the U.S,” the agency said via Twit­ter.

A Venezue­lan, who gave on­ly his first name, Pe­dro, to avoid reper­cus­sions, said this week that he had en­tered the U.S. il­le­gal­ly last week just be­fore the pol­i­cy change, but was re­turned back to Mex­i­co at Piedras Ne­gras.

“They put us on a bus, gave us a snack and took us to the air­port,” said the 43-year-old, who had pre­vi­ous­ly ob­tained le­gal res­i­den­cy in Mex­i­co. He spoke from a mi­grant shel­ter known as “The 72” in Tenosique near the Guatemalan bor­der. “They left us in an in­dus­tri­al area of Vil­la­her­mosa. There they let us go and I came here de­feat­ed.”

Amid all of the move­ment, mi­grants are easy tar­gets. Gangs have kid­napped them from the streets of bor­der cities and en­tire bus­loads in north-cen­tral Mex­i­co.

This week, a bus­load of mi­grants dis­ap­peared near the bor­der of San Luis Po­to­si and Nue­vo Leon states. The mi­grants said a drug car­tel ab­duct­ed them when their bus stopped at a gas sta­tion. They had been trav­el­ling from the south­ern state of Chi­a­pas.

Bus com­pa­ny of­fi­cials first re­port­ed the ab­duc­tion on Tues­day, and told lo­cal me­dia they had re­ceived de­mands for $1,500 apiece to re­lease the mi­grants.

In the days af­ter their ab­duc­tion, 49 were found — Hon­durans, Haitians, Venezue­lans, Sal­vado­rans and Brazil­ians among them — but au­thor­i­ties weren’t en­tire­ly sure how many of them had been on the bus to be­gin with.

“In whose hands are the peo­ple mi­grat­ing?” asked Ale­jan­dra Conde, who works at “The 72” mi­grant shel­ter in Tenosique, one of the largest in south­east Mex­i­co. It’s like “a Machi­avel­lian strat­e­gy be­tween au­thor­i­ties and or­ga­nized crime.” —MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by MARÍA VERZA and EDGAR H. CLEMENTE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Clemente re­port­ed from Tapachu­la, Mex­i­co. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Christo­pher Sher­man in Mex­i­co City con­tributed to this re­port.


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