Migrants Face Dangers

Transiting Through Mexico 

The Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) detains non-Mexican migrants waiting for their CBP One appointments at the US border and sends 90% of them to the state of Tabasco in southern Mexico. Quixote Center invited a small delegation of migrant justice professionals to join us on a week-long journey through a less known migratory path inTabasco, between El Ceibo in Guatemala and Tenosique in Mexico. 

We visited a total of five shelters in the region, most operated by nonprofit Catholic institutions and one run by the Mexican government. We met with human rights defenders as well as government officials working with COMAR (the authority responsible for granting or denying refugee status in Mexico), and we knocked on the doors of the INM attempting to get a meeting. We noticed a stark contrast in how each agency treats the migrant population.

That reality hit us as soon as we arrived in Villahermosa and visited the INM offices where migrants were desperate for help and protection. A small group waiting outside the INM complex had been kidnapped, robbed and beaten by the cartels as they were transiting through the state of Oaxaca. The INM makes them wait in a scorching sun in the street to get some assistance.  

Some reported that the INM fooled them into signing deportation orders, thinking they were getting a pass to transit through Mexico. The situation seemed hopeless, and so we directed them to the local Amparito shelter. Only one of that group ended up making it there that afternoon. 

We were trying to find out if the bus services to the US border from Villahermosa that the INM had announced for asylum seekers with an approved CBP One appointment was actually happening. It turns out that since this announcement only two such buses had taken migrants from Tabasco. INM officials told us that the number of migrants with appointments in Villahermosa is not high enough to justify this service. Indeed, we learned that many migrants who have been deported back south from the US border by the INM decide to either stay in Mexico or return to their country of origin. 

What is clear is that migrants trying to transit through Mexico in hope of reaching the US face many perils, from hostile Mexican authorities as well as organized crime involved in trafficking people, drugs and guns to and from the border. Both are extorting migrants at a multitude of "check points" set up along the different migratory routes. Migrant rights defenders like our friends at the Amparo shelter, at La 72 in Tenosique, Casa Belen in El Ceibo and Casa Betania in Chiapas offer protection and dignity to these vulnerable individuals and families escaping harsh conditions in their home countries. 

Our trip was overshadowed by the US election outcome, which will likely result in an end to the CBP One application process and an increase in deportations from the US into Mexico. We encouraged all asylum seekers we encountered to keep using the app for the next two months and to apply for asylum as soon as they enter the US to mitigate the risk of being deported. Shelters throughout Mexico must be prepared to receive many more migrants and offer them essential services until they can resettle somewhere safe. Quixote Center remains focused on strengthening the capacity of our partners in Mexico to receive migrants with dignity, humanity, and welcome. 

Artist Corner

Rochambeau gives General Capois his horse, 1970s by Cap-Haitianartist Jean-Claude Severe (born 1941)

General Francois Capois at the Vertières, 1977
Gervais Emmanuel Ducasse (Haitian, 1903- 1988)

This week in 1803 the Battle of Vertieres took place near Cap-Haitien in northern Haiti. This battle was when General Jean-Jacque Dessalines and General Francois Capois lead the Haitian revolutionary army to victory against General Rochambeau and the French colonial forces The battle led to the abolition of slavery in Haiti and the declaration of Haitian independence on January 1, 1804.

To view more Haitian art, please visit the Haitian Art Society HERE.

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