A National Guard operation causes panic among the migrant caravan

A National Guard checkpoint has caused panic scenes this Saturday among migrant families traveling north from the border with Guatemala. The clash occurred in Arriaga, one of the last municipalities in Chiapas before crossing into the state of Oaxaca. Agents stopped three vans with dozens of migrants crammed into the back. Together with members of the National Migration Institute (INM), the military began to forcibly remove the people who were traveling in the vehicles. According to the local press, the first arrests even caused the separation of families traveling together.

The crash adds to the chain of harsh actions that the Mexican authorities are carrying out at the border. Last week, the National Guard opened fire on another contingent of migrants near the border, killing a Cuban citizen. Two days ago, another clash began with the launching of tear gas by the military, to which the migrants responded with sticks and stones. The event resulted in several injuries, including a National Guard agent.

In the images of the operation this Saturday, the INM buses are shown where the migrants are transported to the so-called migration stations, in practice detention centers for foreigners in an irregular situation. At the end of October, a new migrant caravan made up of around 4,000 people left Tapachula, a Mexican municipality on the border with Guatemala, with the purpose of marching to Mexico City.

The group, made up mostly of Central American and Haitian refugees, has been spreading after the departure, advancing along different routes, often on foot or with vehicles that agree to transport them, seeking to reach the capital to try to process a document and regularize their The situation in the country is far from the funnel that Tapachula has become, the largest entry point on the southern border, where the migration and asylum authorities are overwhelmed by the swelling of the migratory flow.

Never in history has Mexico received so many people fleeing their countries. From January to October 2021, the country has received 108,195 asylum requests, a record record according to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar). In the first 10 months of the year, the number of requests has tripled compared to the same period in 2020 when about 41,000 procedures were counted. In addition, the figure exceeds by 80% the total of 171,210 migrants who sought refugee status in Mexico over the past six-year period, according to the accumulated from 2013 to 2018 by the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).

While more and more people, mainly from the Central American triangle —El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala— increase the numbers of the phenomenon, Mexico and the United States continue to negotiate joint actions. Washington has decided to promote a plan to invest up to 4,000 million in four years in the region, but at the same time it has warned that the financing is subject to the fight against corruption. Mexico, for its part, continues to lead a cooperation and development project sponsored by ECLAC, the UN economic body for Latin America, which already has a roadmap, but has only just begun to receive the necessary funding.

In addition to Central America, in recent months the migratory focus has also focused on the Haitian community. The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador faced the latest emergency, a wave of Haitian migrants held in a camp under a bridge that links Texas and the State of Coahuila. The Joe Biden Administration began last month the deportation of the nearly 15,000 people who managed to cross and who will be returned to other countries or will end up in Ciudad Acuña, a Mexican municipality that runs the risk of becoming another funnel as Tapachula already is. , a retaining wall for caravans arriving from Central America.

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