VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico. VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico (AP) — “Here, again.”
Yeneska García’s face fell as she said it and she pressed her head in her hands.
since he fled crisis in venezuela In January, the 23-year-old had walked through the Darien jungle that divides Colombia and Panama, narrowly survived a kidnapping by a Mexican cartel and waited months for an asylum appointment in the United States that never came. She finally crossed the US-Mexico border in May, only to be expelled by US authorities.
Now she was back in southern Mexico, after Mexican immigration bused her to sweltering Villahermosa and left her on the street.
“I would rather cross the Darien Gap 10,000 times than cross Mexico,” Garcia said, sitting in a migrant shelter.
He held a crumpled Ziploc bag containing his Venezuelan ID, an inhaler and an apple: the few possessions he had left.
Driven by growing pressure from the United States to block millions of vulnerable people heading north, but lacking the funds to deport them, Mexican authorities are employing a simple but harsh tactic: exhausting migrants until they surrender.
That means migrants are left in limbo as authorities arrest them across the country and dump them in the southern Mexican cities of Villahermosa and San Francisco. Tapachula. Some have been returned up to six times.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that the policy protects migrants.
“We care a lot about … keeping migrants in the southeast because crossing to the north is very risky,” López Obrador said, responding to a question from The Associated Press during his daily briefing.
But the measures have forced migrants, including pregnant women and children, into even more precarious situations. This is likely to get worse in President Joe Biden’s new asylum restrictions, analysts say.
Mexico’s actions explain a drop in arrivals at the US-Mexico border, which fell 40% from an all-time high in December and persisted through the spring. That coincided with an increase in immigrants to Mexico without legal permission, data from the country’s immigration agency shows. U.S. officials primarily credit Mexican surveillance around railroad stations and highway checkpoints.
“Mexico is the wall,” said Josué Martínez, a psychologist at Villahermosa’s only migrant shelter, Oasis de Paz del Espíritu Santo Amparito, which was preparing for a crush of people under Biden’s measure stop asylum processing when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed.
The small shelter has been in trouble since the Mexican government began expelling people two years ago. Last month it housed 528 people, up from 85 in May 2022.
“What will we do when even more people arrive?” Martinez said. “Every time the United States does something to reinforce the northern border, we automatically know that tons of people come to Villahermosa.”
Migrants here walk or take buses north toward Mexico City, where they can apply an appointment to request asylum through the US Customs and Border Protection app, CBP One. But most never make it far enough north to meet the app’s location requirements.
Checkpoints dot the roads of southern Mexico. Armed soldiers remove migrants from buses and corral those walking on the roads and surrounding mountains. Of the two dozen migrants interviewed by the AP, all said they were extorted by Mexican authorities or immigration officials to continue their journey. After distributing considerable sums two or three times, the families had nothing. They were then taken by bus back to the south, where most remain on the streets.
Mexican authorities refer to temporary detentions as “humanitarian rescues.”
But Venezuelan Keilly Bolaños says there is nothing human about them. She and her four children have been sent to southern Mexico six times. This 25-year-old single mother requests asylum so that her 4-year-old daughter can receive treatment for leukemia. not available to her In Venezuela.
Days earlier, she was captured in the northern state of Chihuahua, where she said members of the army beat her in front of her crying children and then put them on a bus for the two-day trip to Villahermosa.
“How can you run when you have four children? “It can’t be done,” said Bolaños.
The family slept on cardboard boxes with other migrants outside the Villahermosa bus terminal. There were still bruises on Bolaños’ legs. However, he planned to take a seventh step north. He has nowhere else to go.
“I know all this fighting will be worth it one day,” he added.
Mexico’s tactics appear to be a way to appease the United States, which has pressured latin american nations to help curb migration while failing to reform their own immigration system that most Americans believe is broken. The incoming president of Panama has promised to block passage through the Darien Gap, while Biden eased criticism of the president of El Salvador after reduced migration.
When Biden announced his new restrictions last week, he said he had “drastically” cut migration to the border “due to the agreement I have reached with President (López) Obrador.” He said he also planned to work with Incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum on border issues.
But Michael Shifter, a member of the Inter-American Dialogue, said such measures are only a short-term solution that does not address root causes of migration.
“They say this is a regional challenge we all need to face together, which is true,” Shifter said. “The problem is: If the United States can’t get its own house in order, that sends a signal to other governments asking, ‘Why should we work with them if the United States itself isn’t capable of addressing the problem?'”
Some asylum seekers said they were willing to give up their “American dream” but can’t leave because they can’t access their consulate or have run out of money.
After being taken off a bus, a group of migrants pleaded with authorities to help them return to Venezuela shortly before being sent back south.
“We just want to go to the embassy in Mexico City. Go back to Venezuela,” Fabiana Bellizar, 30, told officials after being returned from northern Mexico a day earlier. “We don’t want to be here anymore.”
They began traveling the same route the next morning.
Others said they would try to find work and a place to sleep in the city before moving on.
López Obrador said Monday that immigrants in the south are offered jobs, but that the lucky few face precarious conditions. One migrant was paid $25 a day for 12 hours of work under the scorching sun on a mango farm. Another of hers said that her employers tried to force her to do sex work.
Others are forced to take more dangerous routes and fall into the arms of mafias seeking kidnap immigrants.
At the first sign of flashing lights, Honduran Alexander Amador, 27, dove behind a tree and sought refuge in the shadows that covered the highway between the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
Amador and his two traveling companions had been walking for 10 hours, running into the jungle to escape authorities who were trying to pick them up on the road. After being returned to southern Mexico twice while traveling by bus, it was the only thing the Hondurans could think of to move forward.
But they were scared, both by the Mexican authorities and the cartels. Last year, security in southern Mexican states such as Tabasco and Chiapas has skyrocketed as cartels fight for control on lucrative migratory routes.
“You can’t trust anyone here. Everything is a danger to you,” Amador said, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and walking into the darkness.
___
Associated Press writer María Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
