TENOSIQUE, Mexico (AP) – In the first Mexican shelter that migrants reached after migrating through the Guatemalan jungle, about 150 migrants slept in its dormitories and another 150 lay on thin mattresses spread across the floor of his chapel.
In just six weeks of the year, the shelter known as ‘The 72’ housed nearly 1,500 migrants, compared to 3,000 last year. It reduced its dormitory by half due to the pandemic. This was not a problem last year because few migrants showed up, but this year it has been overwhelming.
“We have a huge stream and there is no capacity,” said Gabriel Romero, the priest who runs the shelter in Tenosique, a city in the southern state of Tabasco. “The situation could get out of control. We need to talk to all the authorities before it becomes chaos.” In particular, he wants to help the government with migrants camping outside while they are full.
Latin America’s migrants – from the Caribbean, South America and Central America – are on the move again. After a year of pandemic-induced paralysis, those who come into contact with migrants on a daily basis believe that the current northward can return to the high levels seen in late 2018 and early 2019. The difference is that it would happen during a pandemic.
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The protective health measures that have been put in place to slow down the spread of COVID-19, including the drastically reduced space at shelters along the route, mean less safe spaces for migrants who are in transit.
“The flow is increasing and the problem is that there is less capacity to meet their needs” due to the pandemic, said Sergio Martin, head of the non-governmental aid group Doctors Without Borders in Mexico.
Migrants walk on train tracks on their journey from Central America to the U.S. border., In Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, Wednesday, February 10, 2021. (AP Photo / Isabel Mateos)
((AP Photo / Isabel Mateos))
Some shelters remain closed by local authorities and almost all have had to reduce the number of migrants they can help. Applications for visas, asylum or any other official paperwork are delayed due to the reduced capacity of the government due to the pandemic to process them.
“This is not a migration to COVID; it is a migration in the midst of the pandemic, which makes it all the more vulnerable,” said Ruben Figueroa, an activist in the Meso-American Migrant Movement.
Some migrants have expressed hope for a friendlier reception from the new US government or started moving when some borders reopened. Others are driven by two major hurricanes that plagued Central America in November and deepen the desperation caused by the economic impact of the pandemic.
Olga Rodríguez, 27, has been walking for a month since she and her husband and four children, aged between 3 and 8, left Honduras after Hurricane Eta flooded street vendors’ homes. They arrived in Mexico and applied for asylum, but said it would take six months. Forced to sleep in the street, they changed their minds.
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“The kids got cold, we got wet and I told my husband if we were going to be in the cold and rain, we’d better walk,” she said from Coatzacoalcos. Now their goal is the United States.
President Joe Biden’s government has taken steps to withdraw some of former President Donald Trump’s most stringent policies, but a policy remains allowing U.S. border officials to return anyone immediately due to the pandemic. The U.S. government is concerned that the more hopeful message could lead to a rush to the border, saying it will take time to implement new policies.
Migrants cross the Tuquesa River on foot through the jungle to Bajo Chiquito, Darien Province, Panama, Wednesday, February 10, 2021. Panama reopened its border at the end of January and since then groups have been walking out of the dense jungle of Darien. which divides Panama and Colombia. (AP Photo / Arnulfo Franco)
((AP Photo / Arnulfo Franco))
The number of people arrested at the US-Mexico border in January was more than double that of the same month last year and 20,000 above January 2019. This week, families were seen crossing over from Ciudad Juarez and committing themselves to the Border Patrol surrenders in the hope of applying for asylum.
“Wait in your country, or if you’re in Mexico, wait ‘until you can be sure you can cross legally,” said Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s chief adviser at the border.
Last week, the Biden government announced that it would slowly process the approximately 25,000 asylum seekers forced to await their trial in Mexico under Trump. It would start at three border crossings on Friday.
Mexico has so far said it will continue to enforce an ‘orderly’ migration, which in practice has meant trying to combat migrants in the south as Trump threatened tariffs on all Mexican imports in 2019.
The National Immigration Institute in Mexico said in a statement Tuesday that authorities have conducted 50 raids on freight train lines in southern and central Mexico since Jan. 25 and detained nearly 1,200 migrants.
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President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently warned migrants not to be misled by traders who promise the US will open its doors.
Isabel Chávez, one of the nuns working at the Palenque trek house, about 100 kilometers from Tenosique, said they had to reduce the number of days migrants were allowed to stay there to a maximum of two due to the “flood” of migrants which arrived in January. There would be as many as 220 migrants there, compared to the 100 they would see before the pandemic began in March 2020, she said.
Central American migrants rest on Tuesday, February 9, 2021 at ‘The 72’ shelter in Tenosique, Tabasco, Mexico. Only six weeks into the year, the shelter housed nearly 1,500 migrants compared to 3,000 in the past year, though it has reduced its sleeping capacity with the new cornavirus pandemic. (AP Photo / Isabel Mateos)
((AP Photo / Isabel Mateos))
In Tapachula, the largest Mexican city near its border with Guatemala and home to Mexico’s largest detention center, there are also signs of the increase. “There are more people applying for refuge and the increase in migrants is evident in the public spaces of the city,” said Enrique Vidal Olascoaga, lawyer for the non-governmental organization Fray Matías de Córdova, who helps migrants with legal proceedings .
César Augusto Cañaveral, the director of the Belén shelter in Tapachula, regrets that he had to close the doors of the shelter after it was filled in at the end of January.
“Now we’re taking food to the street and some are sleeping outside,” but it concerned the neighbors of the shelter, who were concerned about the risk of COVID-19 infections. “It’s going to be more complicated than (the wave of migrants in) 2018, because the cherry on top is COVID-19,” he said.
About 1,500 migrants scattered across various camps in Panama, more than 1,300 kilometers southeast, are set to arrive in Tapachula, either as a temporary stopover en route to the U.S. border or to begin the asylum process in Mexico.
In January, Panama reopens its border and since then groups have been marching out of the dense Darien jungle that divides Panama and Colombia. The government has transported them to other camps closer to the Costa Rica border to make way for new arrivals.
Last week, immigration officials in Guatemala warned that a new truck could emerge in Honduras in the coming days. In January, Guatemalan authorities blocked the first caravan of the year, sending nearly 5,000 Hondurans back to their country in ten days.
But while Guatemala was focused on the caravan, other migrants, as always, moved north in small, discreet groups. It was during the caravan last month that shelters in southern Mexico began to increase their numbers with mostly Honduran migrants.
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Small groups of migrants are more vulnerable to criminals kidnapping and blackmailing them, activist Figueroa said.
The most invisible are the paying smugglers who stop it in trailers, such as those stopped by Mexican authorities in Veracruz this week. Inside were 233 migrants, mostly from Guatemala.
At the end of January, 19 bodies, shot and burned, were found in a pickup truck near the border between Mexico and Texas. Most are believed to be Guatemalan migrants. In connection with the case, a dozen state police officers were arrested.
“We anticipate an increase in violence,” said Sergio Martin of Doctors Without Borders, noting that despite the pandemic, migrants are still being forced to move mysteriously.
Just below the boundary from where the bodies were found, Rev. Francisco Gallardo, director of the trek house in Matamoros, said he had recently made arrangements for two pregnant women to give birth to their babies in the Mexican city.
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“Two families eight months pregnant two women pregnant crossed the river,” he said, referring to the Rio Grande that divides the two countries. “They already had their smuggler and decided to risk it.”
Back in southern Mexico, the migrating Edilberto Aguilar continued walking. “It’s a chain,” the 33-year-old Honduran said. “One day we will arrive and tomorrow we will come again. It never ends.”