Thousands more Mexican National Guard troops sent to Tijuana

TIJUANA, Mexico — Thousands more Mexican National Guard troops are scheduled to arrive in Tijuana on Friday to take unprecedented steps in securing the country’s northern border and preventing migrants from crossing into the United States.

Mexican Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval González announced Monday troops and members of the country’s newly formed National Guard — made of military police, the navy, the army and federal police — will also be deployed along the entire stretch of Mexico’s northern border with the United States from Tijuana, Baja California, to Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

Sandoval said the National Guard and army units comprise about 14,000 and 15,000 men deployed in the northern part of the country. Baja California’s incoming governor, Jaime Bonilla, did not have an exact count on how many of those troops would arrive in Tijuana or Baja California, but he said the region was the highest priority to secure.

Sandoval said the National Guard would prevent people from crossing into the United States, but other protocols for processing and sheltering migrants would be handled by different agencies.

Some National Guard troops were already sent to Tijuana earlier in the year to try to stem the increasing violence.

Experts say Mexico has never before deployed so many troops to engage in migration enforcement, and historically, the country has resisted U.S. demands to seal its northern border.

Since October, record-breaking numbers of migrants have traveled in caravans across Mexico trying to reach the United States to claim asylum, causing tense diplomatic relations between the two nations. Many of the mostly Central American migrants said they fled violence caused by government corruption, poverty and gangs.

On Thursday, about 100 Mexican soldiers and immigration agents raided a freight train in southern Mexico and detained dozens of Central American migrants riding atop the cars.

In a scene filmed by Associated Press journalists, the train rolled to a stop in a rural area, and then soldiers climbed ladders to the top of freight cars shouting, “This is the army, you’re surrounded!”

Throngs of migrants tried to flee by running along the tops of freight cars, while others clambered down to the ground and headed into the brush.

The train may have been carrying as many as 400 migrants, and only about 1 in 10 appeared to have been caught.

The country’s Immigration Institute did not immediately respond to requests for details on the raid in Chiapas state.