At least 22 of the 64 Cubans who have spent the last month in the shelter of the Jesús Está Vivo evangelization center of the Immaculate Conception Church in Danlí, Honduras, have had their documents taken from them by members of the Honduran National Police. “They ask you for identification and they no longer return your card or passport. To recover them you must pay 218 dollars,” he denounces from the place to 14ymedio the migrant Arnaldo Rodríguez, a native of Artemisa.
The layman Rigoberto says that since June of the previous year the flow of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and some Africans increased through the city of Danlí, in southern Honduras, and that in their attempt to circumvent the immigration checkpoints they take over the region from Las Colinas, Trojes or Mata de Guineo. On those roads, reveals the religious, they are intercepted by policemen and their passports are snatched, “which is illegal because it is not their jurisdiction.”
The church collaborator points out that the shelter can provide assistance to 300 people. “They have a space to sleep, eat, bathe, take care of some medical problems” and the support to recover their documents. “The Honduran law establishes the payment of 20 dollars for a legal procedure, but there is no fine and less than 200 dollars must be paid. They are violating the rights of these people.”
Father Fermín, in charge of the center, denounced in December alleged immigration representatives who were going to leave the foreigners and returned hours later to inform them of the fines they had to pay. “It’s an injustice, these people are passing through and hardly have money to pay those amounts,” stresses the priest.
The layman Rigoberto says that since June of the previous year the flow of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and some Africans through the city of Danlí, in southern Honduras, increased.
Rodríguez, who is traveling with his partner, also of Cuban nationality, claims to have the amount to recover his papers, but they told him to wait for members of the church to do the paperwork. This Cuban family entered Honduras through the municipality of Trojes, on the border with Nicaragua. “We entered legally, but a contact suggested we continue through the upper area of Mata de Guineo. They stopped us there and brought us to the shelter.”
Bishop José Antonio Canales, consulted by this newspaper, claimed the position of the authorities and demanded that they fulfill their mission of safeguarding the integrity of the migrants. For entering Honduras illegally, the Migration Law in its article 136 establishes a fine of $184, but since March it has not been charged in the Honduran department of El Paraíso.
Upon being detained, the migrants are taken to a center or shelter and from there they are transported to Tegucigalpa, where the authorities give them a document that allows them to move freely through Honduran territory for five days and many use it to reach Guatemala.
More than 3,000 irregular migrants, mostly Cubans, were detained in Honduras last year for entering illegally, some of them with the intention of reaching the United States, according to figures from the National Institute of Migration.
The migratory flow this year does not stop either. Arnaldo Rodríguez, who lived in Nicaragua for three years, assures that “people are moving,” referring to the transit of migrants through Central America. “In Honduras a caravan has already left but we want to arrive legally in Mexico,” he explains. “We are waiting for the papers to be able to travel by bus to Guatemala.”
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