Mexico slowly processing migrants
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — Mexican authorities for a second straight day Saturday refused mass entry to a caravan of Central American migrants held up at the border with Guatemala, but they began accepting small groups for asylum processing and gave out some 45-day visitor permits that would theoretically allow recipients time to reach the United States.
Seeking to maintain order after a chaotic Friday in which thousands rushed across the border bridge only to be halted by a phalanx of officers in riot gear, authorities began handing out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when large numbers of migrants show up there.
Once they were processed, migrants were bused to an open-air, metal-roofed fairground in the nearby city of Migrants stand next to the gate at the Guatemala-Mexico border, waiting to enter Saturday after being checked out by Mexican authorities in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. Mexican officials refused to allow the caravan of Central American migrants into the country en masse.
Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.
But the slow pace frustrated those stuck on the bridge, where conditions were hot and cramped, and some pleaded at the main gate: “Please let us in, we want to work!”
Scarleth Cruz hoisted a crying, sweat-soaked baby girl above the crowd, crying out: “This girl is suffocating.”
Cruz was among the many who appeared willing to accept any kind of migratory relief Mexico might offer. Cruz, 20, said she was going to ask for political asylum because of threats and repression she faced back in Honduras from President Juan Orlando
Hernandez’s governing party.
“Why would I want to go to the United States if I’m going to be persecuted” there as well, she said.
Mexico’s Interior Department said in a statement that it had received 640 refugee requests from Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.
At least a half-dozen migrants fainted in the heat, and a steady stream abandoned the bridge to cross the Suchiate River by swimming, fording its shallows with the aid of ropes or floating in groups of about 10 on rickety rafts. None were
detained despite the hundreds of police lining the bridge.
A Mexican migration official who declined to give his name said that between Friday and Saturday, authorities had deported about 500 people who voluntarily decided to return.
Migrants have commonly cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world’s deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reason for joining the caravan.
The caravan elicited a series of angry tweets and warnings from U.S. President Donald Trump early in the week, but Mexico’s no-nonsense handling of the migrants seems to have satisfied him more recently.