Mexico clears border camp as US pressure intensifies

Blinken, others in meetings with López Obrador

MATAMOROS, Mexico — A ragged migrant tent camp next to the Rio Grande is a long way from Mexico’s National Palace, where a US delegation met this week with Mexico’s president seeking more action to curb a surge of migrants reaching the US border.

But as Mexican officials in the city of Matamoros dispatched heavy machinery to clear out what they claimed were abandoned tents at the camp, the action was a likely sign of things to come.

The United States has given clear signs, including temporarily closing key border rail crossings into Texas, that it wants Mexico to do more to stop migrants hopping freight cars, buses, and trucks to the border.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he got a worried phone call on Dec. 20 from President Biden.

“He asked, Joe Biden asked to speak with me, he was worried about the situation on the border because of the unprecedented number of migrants arriving at the border," López Obrador said Thursday. “He called me, saying we had to look for a solution together.”

Mexico, desperate to get the border crossings reopened to its manufactured goods, started to give indications it would crack down a bit. López Obrador said Thursday that Mexico detained more migrants in the week leading up to Christmas than the United States did, with Mexican detentions rising from about 8,000 per day on Dec. 16 to about 9,500 on Dec. 25.

That increased effort appeared to be on display in Matamoros Wednesday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held talks with López Obrador in Mexico City.

Migrants set up the encampment across from Brownsville, Texas, in late 2022. It once held as many as 1,500 migrants, but many tents were vacated in recent months as people waded across the river to reach the United States.

“What we are doing is removing any tents that we see are empty," Segismundo Doguín, the head of the local office of Mexico’s immigration agency, said.

But one Honduran who would give only his first name, José, claimed that some of the 200 remaining migrants were practically forced to leave the camp when the clearance operation began late Tuesday.

“They ran us out,” he said, explaining that campers were given short notice to move their tents and belongings and felt intimidated by the heavy machinery. “You had to run for your life to avoid an accident.”

Some migrants moved into a fenced-in area of the encampment where immigration officers said they could relocate, but fear remained.

About 70 migrants flung themselves into the river Tuesday night and crossed into the United States. They were trapped for hours along the riverbank beneath the layers of concertina wire set up on order of the Texas governor.

Few options exist for the migrants who were asked to leave the encampment, said Glady Cañas, founder of a Matamorosbased nongovernmental group, Ayudandoles a Triunfar, or Helping Them Win.

“The truth is that the shelters are saturated,” Cañas said.

She was working at the encampment Wednesday afternoon, encouraging migrants to avoid crossing illegally, especially after several drowned in the last few days while attempting to swim the river.

This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested daily on the southwest US border. The United States has struggled to process them at the border and house them once they reach northern cities.

Mexican industries were stung last week when the United States briefly closed two vital Texas railway crossings, arguing that border patrol agents had to be reassigned to deal with a large number of migrants. A non-rail crossing remained closed at Lukeville, Ariz.