NGOs accuse opacity in arrests carried out by Migration

Anthony Heras

Correspondent

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, October 31, 2022, p. 18

Mexicali, BC., Baja California civil society organizations denounced the delegation of the National Institute of Migration (INM), which, they assured, became a filter that prevents the transit of people through airports on this border and maintains opacity in the arrests.

The main task of the federal corporation, they affirmed, is to prevent migrants from crossing the border with California.

They pointed out that personnel from the INM and the National Guard check every passenger who arrives in Baja California on commercial flights, and suspecting that they are foreigners who intend to enter the United States, detain them to enter them into federal facilities and send them to Tabasco.

The director of Cobina, Altagracia Tamayo, said that this has worsened in international air terminals, particularly in Mexicali, since the agents who detect them detain them and transfer them to Tijuana to be processed and expelled, despite carrying documents. immigrants from Mexico and even a plane ticket.

Tamayo, in charge of the La Posada del Migrante shelters, called for the federal government to instruct the INM to set up an updated portal of the hundreds of monthly detentions that are sent to southern Mexico so that they, in turn, are deported. In this way, families and organizations could know who the detainees are and the causes; furthermore, that the arbitrariness of agents and corporations would be inhibited.

He warned that currently 83 percent of the refugees in shelters are Mexicans who were forced to leave their communities due to violence and the presence of drug trafficking, especially in Guerrero and Michoacán.

Even so, it is estimated that in this city there are two thousand migrants waiting to cross into the United States. Before, he said, there was a fund that supported shelters with electricity and rent, but it was canceled in the current administration.

It is the same with the red, blue, yellow or cherry parties, because civil organizations do the work of caring for migrants, a responsibility that the State has and forgets in the face of the insensitivity of those who have power in three or six yearscommented.