With malnutrition, sickness and the risk of being separated from their families are thousands of migrant children and adolescents in a camp in southern Mexico, which is trying to be dismantled by the authorities, warned on Wednesday the UN fund for the childhood, UNICEF.
Pressia Arifin-Cabo, deputy representative of the organization in the Latin American nation, said that the situation at the site is alarming, improvisedly erected on the outskirts of a soccer stadium in the southern city of Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala.
“One of the issues that most concerns UNICEF it is the probability of family separation because there are many families with children who do not present adequate documents or (…) because they lost them when they left their countries, “he said in a video recorded after visiting the region.
Another concern, he added, is that they can be infected with Covid-19 due to the saturation of people in the area. “At this moment the situation in Tapachula is very critical, we cannot leave the children in these situations,” he said.
In recent months, the small city has become a meeting point for tens of thousands of migrants leaving in caravans to the north of the country. Despite the fact that the authorities have tried to stop them, new groups of people continue to arrive, fleeing poverty and violence in their places of origin.
The mexican government In recent days began the transfer of migrants from Tapachula to other regions, promising to regularize their situation, however thousands of them remain in the stadium awaiting a response to their request for refuge or receive humanitarian visas.
The migration authority of Mexico, INM, and the body in charge of providing assistance to children and adolescents, DIF, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
According to official data, 40% of the 84,600 refugee applicants in the country are minors. Many of them seek asylum in USA, who restarted a controversial program on Wednesday that forces applicants for that benefit to wait in Mexico for their immigration hearings.
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