More Cubans seek asylum in Mexico amid clampdown on legal path to US
CUBA- Yatsel Jerez Ramón has been in Mexico for six weeks, and so far, nothing has gone well for the Cuban migrant trying to reach the United States. On his first night in Tenosique, a small city in the southern border state of Tabasco, Jerez, 37, narrowly escaped a police raid at his hotel.
The following day, a man posing as a state lawyer convinced him to hand over $500 to obtain a humanitarian visa with which, Jerez was told, he'd be able to safely continue his passage north. Jerez was travelling with several other Cubans, and together they also forked out $2,000 for an amparo – a legal petition used to temporarily suspend deportation if detained by immigration agents. “We arrived blind,” Jerez told the Guardian, “trusted in what people said, but everyone took advantage of us.”
Armed with the visa and amparo, Jerez boarded a bus heading north hoping to reach the US border within the week, but didn't get far. Jerez was detained at the first checkpoint leaving Tenosique after immigration agents who boarded the bus said the visa was fraudulent, and taken to the overcrowded National Migration Institute (INM) detention centre. Here, according to Jerez, he was threatened with prosecution – and eight years in jail – for false documents if he dared apply for asylum, rather than agreeing to deportation. The amparo was proclaimed useless.
For Jerez, going back to Havana wasn't an option: “I just want to continue on my journey to the US. But I'm scared of being deported, so even if it takes months, seeking asylum in Mexico seems like my only option to reach the border.” Jerez is among a rapidly growing number of Cubans turning to the Mexican asylum system amid a clampdown on alternative legal routes. In the first seven months of this year, 4,604 Cubans applied for asylum in Mexico, representing 10% of all applicants. In 2018, 218 Cubans sought asylum, representing 1% of total applicants. Historically, US-bound Cubans encountered far fewer obstacles on the migration passage due to unique legal protections and economic and educational advantages compared with Central Americans. But, a crackdown by the US and Mexican governments has left tens of thousands of Cubans trapped in Mexico, facing the same dangers and hurdles as migrants from elsewhere. In April, Cubans spearheaded a mass escape from one overflowing detention centre in protest at delays and inhumane conditions. The Cubans' plights can be traced back to Barack Obama's second term, when reducing migration was a key issue in bilateral discussions that eventually led to the historic diplomatic thaw between the old foes.
(The Guardian)