Mexico detains migrant caravan organizers
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities have detained two organizers from Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a controversial activist group that has helped several large caravans of Central American migrants reach the United States border.
Ireneo Mujica, the group’s director, was arrested Wednesday in the northern border city of Sonoyta, where he helps run a shelter for migrants. Cristobal Sanchez, another member of the group, was detained near Mexico’s southern border, in the state of Chiapas. Mexican media reported that both are accused of human trafficking.
The arrests come as Mexico faces intense pressure from President Donald Trump to do more to prevent Central American migrants from crossing its territory.
Angered by a surge of illegal border crossings, Trump has vowed to impose tariffs on all goods from Mexico beginning Monday. An emergency meeting in Washington on Wednesday between U.S. and Mexican authorities to avert the tariffs appeared not to satisfy Trump, who tweeted Wednesday evening that there had been “not nearly enough progress.”
Mexican authorities have sought to demonstrate to their U.S. counterparts that they are doing everything they can to limit migration through their territory while also respecting the migrants’ human rights. Mexican detentions and deportations of Central Americans are up significantly compared to last year.
It was unclear whether the arrest of two organizers with Pueblo Sin Fronteras was an attempt to further appease U.S. authorities.
A statement from the group called the detention of Mujica and Sanchez part of a “campaign of criminalization and harassment by the authorities, both Mexican and American.”
The group, a small collective of volunteers based in the U.S. and Mexico, helped create the migrant caravan trend. It organized the first caravan to the U.S. border in 2017 and has helped guide several other large groups since.
It says the caravans shield participants from rape, kidnapping and other perils of the migrant trail while drawing attention to the reasons they flee and their treatment on the journey north.
But the group has drawn considerable criticism, with conservatives in both countries accusing the group of human trafficking.
Documents leaked earlier this year by NBC7, a news channel in San Diego, showed that the U.S. authorities had monitored Pueblo Sin Fronteras activists, as well as journalists and attorneys who interacted with a migrant caravan in Tijuana.
Mujica, who is a dual U.S. and Mexican citizen, has also been accused by U.S. prosecutors of conspiring with Arizona migrant activist Scott Warren to harbor two migrants in the country illegally last year. Warren, a leader of the humanitarian group No More Deaths, which leaves water and other supplies for migrants along desolate stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, is currently on trial for allegedly shielding the migrants from authorities for several days. Warren has pleaded not guilty. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison.
Mujica has been detained in the past by Mexican authorities but has never been convicted of a crime.