Pressure Building Over Migrant Safety in Mexico After Spate of Attacks Brianna Lee - International Business Times
go to original June 24, 2015

A Salvadoran father carries his son while running next to another immigrant as they try to board a train heading to the Mexican-U.S. border near Mexico City. (Reuters/Edgard Garrido)

Mexico is beefing up its role as an enforcer against illegal migration, deporting more Central American migrants than U.S. authorities are apprehending. But amid the crackdown, there’s growing alarm that the migrants, mostly coming from Central America, are increasingly vulnerable to violent attacks.

Undocumented Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are continuing to stream north into Mexico and the United States, though there have been significantly fewer migrants found at the southern U.S. border. But as Mexican enforcement authorities ramp up deportations under the so-called Southern Border Plan, migrants have taken more dangerous routes north to the U.S., and human rights advocates say Mexico isn’t doing enough to protect potential refugees and asylum seekers in peril.

Reports of migrants facing attacks or kidnappings have worried groups like Amnesty International, which issued a call last week for the Mexican government to investigate the violence. According to the group, more than 220 Central American migrants headed for the U.S. border were attacked by armed groups in the first two weeks of June alone. It cited two separate incidents in which large groups of migrants were ambushed by armed men wielding firearms.

“Mexico has become a death trap for migrants, with vicious criminal gangs at every corner waiting for their opportunity to attack them for a few dollars, while authorities at the state and federal level are more eager to deport people than to save their lives,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, director of the Americas for Amnesty International, in a statement last week.

Read the rest at International Business Times

Related: Is Mexico Doing the US's Dirty Work by Deporting Central American Migrants? (PRI's The World)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!