Mexico moving migrants away from borders to relieve pressure
MEXICO CITY
Mexico is flying migrants south away from the U.S. border and busing new arrivals away from its boundary with Guatemala to relieve pressure on its border cities.
In the week since Washington dropped pandemicera restrictions on seeking asylum at its border, U.S. authorities claim there’s been a dramatic drop in illegal crossing attempts. In Mexico, officials are generally trying to keep migrants south away from that border, a strategy that could reduce crossing temporarily, but experts say is not sustainable.
Between the migrants who rushed to cross the border in the days before the U.S. policy change and
Mexico’s efforts to move others to the country’s interior, shelters in northern border cities currently find themselves below capacity.
In southern Mexico, however, shelters for migrants are full and the government is busing hundreds of migrants more than 200 miles north to relieve pressure in Tapachula near Guatemala. The government said it deployed hundreds more National Guard troops to the south last week.
On Friday night Mexico’s immigration agency was offering migrants camped in the center of Mexico City — most of them Haitians — to fly them to Huixtla, a city near Tapachula, to lodge them and expedite the processing of documents, said Alma Rubí Pérez, a representative of the immigration agency in the country’s capital.
Segismundo Doguín, Mexico’s top immigration official in the border state of Tamaulipas, across from Texas, said last week that the government would fly as many migrants away from border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros as necessary.
The transfers were “lateral movements to other parts of the country” where there were not so many migrants, Doguín said. He called them “voluntary humanitarian transfers.”
The Associated Press confirmed Mexican flights from Matamoros, Reynosa and Piedras Negras carrying migrants to the interior over the past week. A Mexican federal official, who was not authorized to speak publicly but agreed to discuss the matter if not quoted by name, said approximately 300 migrants were being transferred south each day.
Among them were at least some of the 1,100 migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba that the U.S. returned to Mexico in the week since the policy change.
“So the northern part of the migrant route is emptied out a bit, but the southern and middle parts remain extremely full and filling up all the time,” said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight and a close observer of the border at WOLA, a Washington-based human rights organization.
Mexico has moved migrants south in the past when there was concern about northern border cities’ capacity, but this time there are additional factors.
A severe drought affecting the Panama Canal is forcing container vessels to lighten their loads and pay higher fees, with further increases in the cost of shipping cargo through the canal expected this summer.
The largest vessels will have to reduce their drafts – how low they sit in the water – by carrying less or cutting the weight of their cargoes as of May 24, followed by another decrease that kicks in on May 29. Some major ocean carriers have also announced new fees for goods shipped on the route as of June 1 in response to the canal restrictions.
These measures are likely to result in delays and higher costs for goods that are shipped through the canal, which typically sees 5% of annual global maritime trade pass through its locks.
The canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, has been struggling with water supply shortages since before a 2016 expansion that allowed much larger ships to pass through. It has a protocol of transit fees and weight restrictions that kick in as drought conditions worsen.
Rainfall was less than 50% of normal from February to April near the canal and the lakes that feed it. That amount of rain ties with 2019, which saw the lowest level in two decades, according to Everstream Analytics. And there’s no sign of the rainy season that typically starts