Pressure mounts in Mexican camp
THOUSANDS of migrants are camping in squalid conditions in a remote southern Mexican town after US and Mexican authorities implemented new policies aimed at stemming the illegal flow of Venezuelans into the US.
Located on a muddy sports field in San Pedro Tapanatepec in Oaxaca state, the camp is the largest in recent Mexican history according to advocates.
About 12000 people, largely from Venezuela, are sleeping on wooden crates under white canopy tents, on sidewalks or in residents’ houses and backyards. The surge of migrants in the small town is straining its infrastructure and fuelling tensions with local authorities who say they are bearing the brunt of shifting US and Mexican immigration policy.
This week, after a US judge ruled unlawful a pandemic-era order known as Title 42 used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants to Mexico, municipal authorities encouraged migrants to form a caravan to head north. The authorities said they had threatened to empty the camp by organising caravans unless the federal government dismantles it soon.
Any further large flows of migrants to the US-Mexico border would heap pressure on the administration of US President Joe Biden, already facing criticism over its immigration policies from within its own party, as well as from migrant advocates and Republican lawmakers.
“The camp is the worst thing ever, because there’s sickness and there’s filth,” said Jose Maria Lopez, who left his hometown in Venezuela in September and is in the camp for a second time after authorities detained him near the US border.
At night, the tents echo with coughing, children crying and the buzz of mosquitoes. By day, migrants jostle in sweltering heat to be added to lists determining when Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) will give them a temporary migration document for travel within the country. Several migrants said they had waited for over a month.
The build-up of people at the camp underscores Mexico’s efforts to co-operate with the US goal of keeping migrants from advancing to its border.
Under a joint plan aimed at quelling a record influx of Venezuelan migrants, US migration authorities have been expelling Venezuelans caught crossing illegally back to Mexico under Title 42.
INM also implemented new procedures in southern Mexico. It established the pop-up migration office in San Pedro Tapanatepec in August to process migration documents, and migrants soon began camping in and around the facilities.
Last month, authorities added a stamp saying the documents are only valid within Oaxaca state. That led to migrants returning repeatedly to the camp because migration authorities detain them in other states and send them back to cities near the southern border with Guatemala.
A Mexican official said the new procedure was among several aimed at helping Mexico contain the large population of Venezuelans now in limbo within Mexico due to the new US policy.
It remains unclear how the ruling on Title 42, expected to take effect in mid-December, will impact INM’s approach to the camp.