Mexico takes new steps to close its southern border to migrants

Mexico sent dozens of immigration agents and National Guard troops to its border with Guatemala Sunday to stem the flow of migrant families.

|
AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo
Mexican immigration agents review the IDs of Guatemalan travelers crossing the Suchiate River, the natural border between Guatemala and Mexico, near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Sunday, March 21, 2021.

The Mexican banks of the Suchiate river dawned Sunday with a heavy presence of immigration agents in place to enforce Mexico’s new limits on all but essential travel at its shared border with Guatemala.

Dozens of immigration agents lined the riverside asking those who landed on the giant innertube rafts that carry most of the cross-border traffic for documentation and turning many back.

But those turned away weren’t migrants, they were the small-time Guatemalan merchants and residents from Tecun Uman, across the river, who buy in bulk in Mexico to re-sell in Guatemala or purchase household items when the exchange rate favors it.

“They haven’t let us enter because they think we’re migrants when really we’re only coming to shop,” said Amalia Vázquez, a Guatemalan citizen with her baby tied to her back and seven other relatives accompanying her. Vázquez said her family travels the 100 kilometers monthly from Quetzaltenango to buy plastic items and sweets they re-sell at home.

After a negotiation, immigration agents allowed her sister and another relative to pass, but they had to leave their IDs with agents while they shopped. Nearby, other agents turned away a man who said he was just coming to buy his medicine.

The Mexican government has interrupted the usually free-flowing cross-river traffic here before, infuriating merchants on both sides. In recent years, as migrant caravans arrived in Tecun Uman, Mexican troops lined the Mexican side of the Suchiate and largely stopped the raft traffic.

The last time was in January 2020 when hundreds of soldiers blocked large groups of migrants trying to cross.

This time there is no large migrant presence across the river, but Mexico is again under pressure to slow the flow of migrants north as the U.S. government wrestles with growing numbers, especially of families and unaccompanied minors.

Many of those, however, are believed to be traveling with smugglers who can simply choose among the hundreds of unmonitored crossing points on Mexico’s long jungle borders with Guatemala and Belize.

The government said the measures that went into effect Sunday — one year into the pandemic — were aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19. But most saw it as a cover to again try to control illegal migration and no one was talking about health concerns. The U.S. and Mexico have had a similar limit on non-essential travel on their shared border for a year, but Mexico is one of the few countries to otherwise not impose health restrictions on people entering the country by land or air.

“There's no reason that this would help public health," said Yuriria Salvador of the Fray Matías de Cordova Human Rights Center in Tapachula. ”It comes from the negotiation with the United States, it's very clear."

“What is going to happen is that they'll be pushed more into secrecy and the trafficking of people,” Salvador said.

Juan José Ramírez, a Guatemalan who crosses to Mexico daily just upriver at the Talisman crossing, said he didn't note any change Sunday at the port of entry.

“They only asked for my border visitor card, but the taking of the temperature and all of that, they stopped awhile ago," he said. "It was only at the beginning (of the pandemic) when it was worse.”

The Mexican government last week also announced a new effort against the smuggling of families with minors. They said they would increase patrols in areas and checkpoints and use drones and night vision to watch crossing points.

On Saturday, Mexico's immigration agency announced that authorities had detained 95 Central American and Cuban migrants who arrived by plane to the northern city of Monterrey. Among them were eight unaccompanied minors. The flights originated in southeast Mexican cities, Villahermosa and Cancun. Smugglers sometimes put migrants who can pay on such flights to avoid highway checkpoints in Mexico.

On Friday, hundreds of National Guard troops and immigration agents paraded through the capital of the southern state of Chiapas. On Sunday, few soldiers were visible along the river.

“It’s all a show,” said a woman with a sweets stand in the market, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation. “They don’t let the ones coming to buy pass, but the smugglers are very active.”

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute says smugglers are telling Central American migrants to bring children to improve their chances of entering Mexico and the United States.

The flow hasn’t reached early 2019 levels yet, but the U.S. government is worried by the rapid increase in illegal entries since last fall.

“It isn’t much that we take for reselling," said María Vázquez, Amalia’s sister, while she negotiated the price of some cookies and her family waited by the river. “The migrants traveling in groups really harm us and the pandemic too. They never asked us for documentation.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Mexico takes new steps to close its southern border to migrants
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2021/0321/Mexico-takes-new-steps-to-close-its-southern-border-to-migrants
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe