MEXICO ENFORCES LIMITS ON NON-ESSENTIAL TRAVEL AT ITS BORDER WITH GUATEMALA

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 border with Guatemala.

Dozens of immigration agents lined the riverside asking those who landed on the giant 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 resell 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 Vazquez, a Guatemalan citizen with her baby tied to her back and seven other relatives with her. Vazquez said her family travels about 60 miles monthly from Quetzaltenango to buy plastic items and sweets they resell 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 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 are believed to be traveling with smugglers who can simply choose among the hundreds of unmonitored crossing points on Mexico’s jungle borders with Guatemala and Belize.