Between tears and with a big hug for just five minutes, dozens of migrant families sealed a reunion on the line that separates Mexico and the United States —heavily guarded by US security forces_, an act that gave a breather to the tensions that preceded the upcoming lifting of the restrictions on asylum related to the pandemic and which have coincided with the rescue of hundreds of kidnapped migrants in the north of the country.
This is how the tenth edition of the event known as “Abrazos, no muros” (Hugs, no walls) was held on the limits of the Río Bravo, near the Casa de Adobe Museum in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, organized by humanitarian groups that provide support to migrants and the authorities. Mexican and American.
To the rhythm of the popular song “Las mañanitas”, performed by a mariachi, nearly 150 families of Mexican migrants began to cross the river in the middle of the morning to meet their loved ones, whom they had not seen for years. while being watched by the authorities.
Shortly before meeting her son, whom she had not seen for two years, Margarita Piña could not hide her emotion.
“It is very hard because we do not know what they are suffering over there,” Piña said when talking about the separation from her son who left, in the middle of the pandemic, for the United States in search of a better future.
Although she knew in advance that she would only have five minutes to see and hug her son, Piña indicated that she would take advantage of the short time to tell him “that he wants to, we still love them very much.”
The initiative, which began in 2016, allows families separated by immigration policies to meet again for a few minutes after years of separation.
Unlike other years, this time the event took place in the midst of strong custody by the US security forces, which have reinforced surveillance and fenced the border with wire in anticipation of a huge arrival of migrants to the border area by the next end of Title 42a sanitary norm that was imposed at the beginning of the pandemic that allowed immediate expulsions with the excuse of COVID-19.
Under the protection of this regulation, the United States carried out more than 2.8 million expulsions of migrants since March 2020. The government of President Joe Biden will end Title 42 at 11:59 p.m. on May 11, according to the Department of State. The decision “does not mean the border is open,” he added.
The United States announced this week that 1,500 active-duty troops will be sent to El Paso, Texas, to add to the 2,500 National Guard troops already stationed on the border.
“We have never had a border as militarized as today,” said activist Fernando García, head of the Network in Defense of the Rights of Migrants, when complaining about the heavy surveillance and assured that this situation made it more difficult than ever to carry out the act that considered it a “protest event in the face of all this irrational politics.”
“There is a war against the migrants, the refugees, against us, the border,” he added.
Among those attending the event was the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, who in recent months has been the center of criticism for proposing the toughening of policies towards the thousands of migrants who have overflowed the border city, a situation that has sparked friction. with the residents.
Pérez Cuéllar softened his position after the tragic fire that occurred at the end of March in a detention center of the National Institute of Migration where 40 migrants died and 27 were injured. Most of the deceased were Guatemalans, followed by Salvadorans, Hondurans, Venezuelans and a Colombian.
The mayor praised the “Hugs, not walls” initiative and told the press that the traditional event “is a way of reminding us that we are a community, that we are two countries and three cities, but we are one community.”
The Sonora State Prosecutor’s Office, which borders Arizona, announced on Saturday that 113 migrants of different nationalities were rescued in the town of San Luis Río Colorado after an investigation that began the day before after the discovery of 10 Colombians who were kidnapped this week and later released by their captors near a gas station.
The hundred migrants released are from the United States, India, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cuba, Colombia and Afghanistan, said the Prosecutor’s Office.
In the operation, in which elements of the Specialized Unit to Combat Kidnapping, the Criminal Investigation Ministerial Agency, the army and the state and municipal police participated, three Mexicans and two Hondurans were arrested for their alleged connection to the kidnapping. of the migrants.
In Sonora a week ago another 63 kidnapped migrants were found, most of them Ecuadorian. Another similar case occurred last month in the northern state of San Luis Potosí, where approximately 100 kidnap victims were found in an operation in which 20 were being sought.
Last year, more than 2,100 foreigners were detained by migrant smugglers, according to figures from Mexico’s National Institute of Migration.
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