TENOSIQUE, Mexico (AP) – In the first Mexican shelter reached by migrants after a walk in the Guatemalan jungle, about 150 migrants are sleeping in their dormitories and another 150 are on thin mattresses scattered on the floor of their chapel.
Just six weeks into the year, the shelter known as “The 72” has already welcomed around 1,500 migrants, compared with 3,000 last year. He halved his sleeping space due to the pandemic. This was not a problem last year because few migrants arrived, but this year it was overwhelmed.
“We have a huge flow and no capacity,” said Gabriel Romero, the priest who runs the shelter in Tenosique, a city in the southern state of Tabasco. “The situation can get out of hand. We need a dialogue with all the authorities before it becomes chaos. ”In particular, he would like the government to help migrants who camp outside while they are full.
Migrants from Latin America – from the Caribbean, South America and Central America – are moving again. After a year of pandemic-induced paralysis, those in daily contact with migrants believe that the flow to the north may return to the high levels seen in late 2018 and early 2019. The difference is that this would happen during a pandemic.
Health protection measures imposed to slow the spread of COVID-19, including drastically reducing the space for beds in shelters along the route, mean less safe spaces for migrants in transit.
“The flow is increasing and the problem is that there is less capacity than before to meet their needs” because of the pandemic, said Sergio Martin, head of the Mexico Without Borders non-government aid group.
Some shelters remain closed by local health authorities and almost all have had to reduce the number of migrants who 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 post-COVID migration; it is a migration in the midst of the pandemic, which makes it even more vulnerable, ”said Ruben Figueroa, an activist in the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement.
Some migrants expressed hope for a more friendly welcome from the new United States administration or began to move when some borders were reopened. Others are being driven by two major hurricanes that devastated Central America in November and despair has been aggravated by the economic impact of the pandemic.
Olga Rodríguez, 27, has been walking for a month since she left Honduras with her husband and four children, aged 3 to 8, after Hurricane Eta flooded the street vendors’ home. They arrived in Mexico and applied for asylum, but said it would take six months. Forced to sleep on the street, they changed plans.
“The children got cold, we got wet and I told my husband that if we are going to be cold and rain, we better go on foot,” she said of Coatzacoalcos. Now, your goal is the United States.
President Joe Biden’s administration has taken steps to reverse some of former President Donald Trump’s tougher policies, but one policy continues to allow U.S. border officials to immediately send back almost anyone due to the pandemic. The United States government is concerned that the most hopeful message could trigger a rush to the border and says it will take time to implement new policies.
The number of people seized at the US-Mexico border in January was more than double the same month last year and 20,000 above January 2019. This week families were seen crossing from Ciudad Juarez and surrendering to the border patrol in the hope of applying for asylum.
“Wait in your country or, if you’re in Mexico, wait” until you’re sure you can cross legally, said Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s top advisor at the border recently.
Last week, the Biden administration announced that it would slowly begin prosecuting the nearly 25,000 asylum seekers who were forced to await the process in Mexico under Trump. This was scheduled to start Friday at three border crossings.
So far, Mexico has said it will continue to impose “orderly” migration, which in practice means trying to contain migrants in the south since Trump threatened tariffs on all Mexican imports in 2019.
On Tuesday, the National Immigration Institute of Mexico said in a statement that the authorities had stopped 50 freight train lines since January 25 in southern and central Mexico, arresting some 1,200 migrants.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently warned migrants not to be fooled by traffickers who promise that the United States will open its doors.
Isabel Chávez, one of the nuns working at the migrant shelter in Palenque, about 100 kilometers from Tenosique, said that they had to reduce the number of days that migrants could stay there to a maximum of two because of the “avalanche” of migrants who arrived in January. There would be up to 220 migrants there compared to the 100 they would see before the pandemic started in March 2020, she said.
In Tapachula, the largest Mexican city near the border with Guatemala and where Mexico’s largest detention center is located, there are also signs of an increase. “There are more people asking for refuge and the increase in migrants is evident in the public spaces of the city,” said Enrique Vidal Olascoaga, a lawyer with the non-governmental organization Fray Matías de Córdova, who helps migrants in legal proceedings.
César Augusto Cañaveral, director of the Bom Pastor shelter in Tapachula, regretted having to close the shelter’s doors after it filled in late January.
“Now we take food out into the street and some sleep outside,” but that worries the neighbors at the shelter, who are concerned about the risk of COVID-19 infections. “This is going to be more complicated than (the wave of migrants in) 2018, because the icing on the cake is COVID-19,” he said.
Now, more than 2,100 kilometers to the southeast, some 1,500 migrants spread across various camps in Panama are aiming to reach Tapachula, either as a temporary stopover en route to the border with the United States or to start the asylum process in Mexico.
Panama reopened its border in late January, and since then, groups have left the dense jungle of Darién that divides Panama from Colombia. The government is sending them to other camps near the border with Costa Rica to make room for newcomers.
Last week, Guatemalan immigration officials warned that a new caravan of migrants could be forming in the coming days in Honduras. In January, Guatemalan authorities blocked the first caravan of the year, sending some 5,000 Hondurans back to their country within 10 days.
But while Guatemala was concentrated on the caravan, other migrants were moving north, as always, in small, discreet groups. It was during the caravan last month that shelters in southern Mexico began to see their numbers increase, with most Honduran migrants.
Small groups of migrants are more vulnerable to criminals who kidnap and extort them, said activist Figueroa.
More invisible are the smugglers who put them in trailers like the one that Mexican authorities stopped in Veracruz this week. Inside there were 233 migrants, mainly from Guatemala.
In late January, 19 bodies, shot and burned, were found inside a pickup truck near the Mexico-Texas border. Most were considered Guatemalan migrants. A dozen state police officers were arrested in connection with the case.
“We anticipate an increase in violence,” said Sergio Martin, of Doctors Without Borders, noting that, despite the pandemic, migrants continue to be forced to move underground.
At the border where the bodies were found, Reverend Francisco Gallardo, director of the migrants’ shelter in Matamoros, said he recently made arrangements for two pregnant women to deliver their babies in the Mexican city.
“Two families with two eight-month pregnant women have just crossed the river” for the United States, he said, referring to the Rio Grande that divides the two countries. “They already had the smuggler and decided to take a risk.”
Back in southern Mexico, migrant Edilberto Aguilar continued walking. “This is a chain,” said the 33-year-old Honduran. “One day we arrive and tomorrow others arrive. It never ends. “
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Verza reported from Mexico City. AP writers Juan Zamorano in Panama City and Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City contributed.