Mexico warns migrants that the US will continue to expel those who cross illegally

The Mexican government sent a strong message to migrants on Friday so that they are not fooled by traffickers and choose to reach the United States managing their visa applications before entering Mexico, because although some rules will change next week, Washington will continue to expel those who cross illegally and the risks of crossing the Latin American country remain a reality.

“We are seeing a very important flow in recent days based on a hoax,” explained the Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard. The traffickers or smugglers “tell them: hurry to get to the United States by crossing Mexico because on May 11 they are going to remove title 42”, the health regulation imposed at the beginning of the pandemic that allowed immediate expulsions with the excuse of COVID-19.

“It is not true… that they are going to stop repatriating people who enter illegally,” insisted the foreign minister during the presidential morning conference. “It’s a hoax and they take a risk.”

In addition to the danger of traveling crowded in trucks, or exposing yourself to robbery or extortion by criminals and authorities, another major risk is kidnapping.

Last year, more than 2,100 foreigners were detained by migrant smugglers, the National Migration Institute said in a statement on Friday. In recent months the situation has worsened or, at least, there has been information on more massive cases.

One of the latest took place in Sonora, a state bordering Arizona, where ten Colombians were kidnapped this week and released on Friday night, family members and the Colombian consul in Mexico, Andrés Camilo Hernández, confirmed to the AP.

As Johan Morales explained by telephone from Bogotá, on Tuesday morning they lost track of their parents, their 18-year-old brother, their uncles and several friends near the border city of San Luis Río Colorado, from where they planned to surrender to the US authorities to request asylum after traveling almost 1,800 kilometers by bus from the Pacific city of Tepic.

Early Thursday morning his cousin, who lives in upstate New York, received the first call, demanding a ransom of $2,500 per head to free them.

State authorities reported a search operation early Friday morning and, according to the consul, everything points to the fact that the kidnappers felt pressured and decided to release their hostages near a gas station.

But in addition to the pressure, Johan Morales indicated that his cousin had to manage the payment of $12,000 as a ransom. In the evening, the INM said in a statement that it planned to give them a humanitarian visa for having been victims of a crime.

In that same area just a week ago, another 63 kidnapped migrants were located, most of them Ecuadorians. His search also began with a consular request.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador mentioned at the conference that there were also again cases of kidnappings of migrants in San Luis Potosí, in the north-central region of the country, where in April approximately 100 kidnapped persons were found in an operation in which they were looking for to 20.

All the changes in immigration policies in Mexico and, above all, in the United States, tend to have a pull effect because, whether or not they involve benefits for migrants, traffickers always distort the news to make it appear that way and thus encourage business. illicit.

On this occasion, although the United States will stop applying the so-called title 42 next week, the situation would not change for Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians, who, together with Central Americans, make up the bulk of those who cross Mexico. There will be 30,000 visas a month for those four nationalities and the Mexican government promises to continue receiving an equal number of those who cross illegally.

However, there is a change with respect to migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, who will now be able to access 100,000 US visas for family reunification from their countries.

The United States is going to open migrant processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia to handle new applications, and both the federal and state governments and border cities are already preparing for a massive arrival of migrants.

The same is not the case in Mexico. According to López Obrador, “we are pending but we have the same plan that has been applied on other occasions for shelters, medical services.”

Civil organizations, which are the ones that mostly manage these places, have been warning for weeks that they are at maximum capacity.

The Mexican president insisted that the government take care of the migrants, but on the minds of many is the event that occurred just over a month ago when 40 migrants detained at the INM facilities in Ciudad Juárez, bordering El Paso, Texas, died. suffocated in a fire. The head of the institute and seven other officials are under trial for that case.

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