Thousands of Migrants Caught in Crackdown Along Mexico's Southern Border John Stanton - BuzzFeed
go to original December 8, 2014

TENOSIQUE, MEXICO — For migrants at the Casa de Migrante, there’s not much to do but wait.

Men and women lean against the chapel wall, trying to stay in the shade it provides. A group of younger immigrants plays a pickup game of soccer. More still nap in the doorways of the shelter’s dormitories.

Once a pit stop on the long, dangerous trail north to the U.S. border, Tenosique has become ground zero for a remarkably successful push to cut off the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States.

In the wake of more than 70,000 minors crossing the U.S. border, a Mexican government initiative launched in July has attacked existing immigrant routes, in particular along the southern border of Mexico, and ruthlessly choked off the flow of people.

As a result, tens of thousands of migrants have found themselves caught along that southern border. It’s impossible to travel through the border states of Tabasco, Chiapas, and Vera Cruz and not see them everywhere: walking single file down jungle roads, selling foreign foods like papusas from crude street carts, begging outside churches — and increasingly filing local jail cells for petty crimes.

It’s a looming humanitarian crisis, activists warn, that could rock Mexico’s southeast region and send the extremely poor border states already plagued by cartel violence and endemic corruption into chaos.

“This is just a ticking time bomb,” said Fray Tomas, a Franciscan friar who along with Fray Aurelio runs the shelter in Tenosique. “We are filling up the southeast with tons of people, crime, corrupt authorities. This will explode.”

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On the Immigrant Trail: Guatemala-Mexico Border (Francisco Barragan/NPPA)

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