The National Migration Institute (INM) reported the dismantling of a camp in which there were more than 400 migrants of different nationalities, located in a central neighborhood of Mexico City. According to the authorities, the migrants were transferred to different states, where their situation would be regularized.
The camp had been set up there for many months and the migrants lived under tents and tarps. The place was near the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, the office that is in charge of managing refugee applications and which closed its doors on May 29 without giving explanations.
Many migrants who were doing their paperwork at said office chose to stay in the camp that was located on a nearby street. In 2023 it was also almost empty of migrants but then they settled again. Some neighbors had complained because the place did not meet the necessary conditions for entire families with minors to live.
The eviction was carried out with a strong deployment of immigration agents and the National Guard, on Wednesday night, one day after US President Joe Biden ordered suspend asylum processing on its southern border when arrests for illegal income reached 2,500 a day. Currently, about 4,000 people cross irregularly into the United States from Mexico every day.
According to the official statement, immigration agents spoke with each of the 432 migrants and of them, 82 accepted their transfer to “immigration spaces” near the capital of the country where they offered to carry out the regularization procedures for them.
Another 99 people agreed to receive a visitor visa for humanitarian reasons, which allows foreigners to move freely around the country, but authorities did not specify where they were taken to receive these documents.
The Migration Affairs Program of the Ibero-American University, which maintains constant monitoring of the immigration situation, said that 11 buses left the camp area and expressed fear over the lack of clarity in the destination to which they were going.
On other occasions, migrants have been transferred to the south of the country from where, more tired and with less money, they once again undertake the dangerous route north.
It was also reported that nine of the migrants who were in the camp were taken to the INM offices in the capital and seven, including three minors, to a shelter. The others, according to the statement, decided to leave the area on their own because they had valid immigration documents.
According to the INM, foreigners paid a fee of between 200 and 600 pesos (between 11 and 33 dollars) to a territorial leader to have a place in the camp.
According to videos released on social networks, the head of the immigration agency, Francisco Garduño, was present at the eviction, who faces a judicial process in freedom for the fire at the Ciudad Juárez detention center in March 2023 where 40 migrants died.
The flow of migrants from Central America to the United States has not stopped growing; In 2023 he broke all kinds of records. According to official data, in Mexico authorities located more than 780,000 foreigners in an irregular situation last year, compared to less than half a million located in 2022.
In 2023, just over 50,000 were returned to their countries of origin, which seems to indicate that the bulk stayed in Mexico or tried to cross into the United States, which at the end of last year also recorded unprecedented numbers of daily arrivals to the border
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees expressed his concern about the closure of the COMAR offices in May because it affected hundreds of people who require protection and who need Mexico to have a “safe and dignified” space for care.
These offices also registered a record in 2023 of 141,000 refugee requests in Mexico.
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