Shelters on Southern Border Overflow as More Central American Migrants Opt to Stay Nina Lakhani - IRIN
go to original November 3, 2016

A different image of migrants is spreading across Mexico city. A grassroots public awareness campaign is seeking to break prejudice against migrants, and it has been designed by themselves. (teleSUR English )

For years, Central Americans – mainly working-age men – have passed through Tapachula, near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, en route to the US in search of a better life. But nowadays, the city’s migrant shelters are overflowing with families seeking refuge.

Only a tiny minority will find it in Mexico, where a lack of awareness about refugee rights, combined with pressure from Washington to detain and deport Central Americans, means only a fraction of those eligible for international protection are getting it.

...In 2015, around 400,000 undocumented migrants entered Mexico through its porous southern border with Guatemala, and this year 450,000 are expected.

While most still try to reach the United States, an increasing number of families are seeking refuge closer to home in Costa Rica, Belize, and Mexico. This is largely down to an immigration crackdown launched in July 2014 under pressure from the US, after a record number of unaccompanied Central American children reached the Mexico-US border.

Since then, US aid has helped fund the deployment of thousands of Mexican troops who work alongside immigration agents, detaining and deporting potential refugees before they reach the US border.

Almost 200,000 migrants were detained by Mexican immigration agents last year, a rise of 130 percent from 2013. Nine out of 10 of those detained were from the Northern Triangle.

“Mexico’s immigration ‘policy’ is to stop people from reaching the north; that’s it, there’s no other strategy or plan,” Fermina Rodriguez, from the Fray Mattias Human Rights Centre in Tapachula, told IRIN. “No thought was given to what desperate people would do if they couldn’t reach the US. Of course they would look for alternatives.”

Read the whole article at IRIN

Related: Are Cartels Vandalizing Migrant Shelter in Mexico? (The Republic)

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