The INM calls the persecution of expatriates a humanitarian rescue: academic

Nestor Jimenez

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, January 31, 2022, p. eleven

The National Migration Institute (INM) uses the term humanitarian rescue What euphemismsince in reality it is about arrests in the middle of a campaign of persecution, explained Margarita Núñez, coordinator of the Migration Affairs Program of the Universidad Iberoamericana.

The implementation of this expression began in the six-year term of Enrique Peña Nieto and has been taken up by the institute in recent months in a constant manner to report operations of this type almost daily.

Although, in accordance with the legislation, immigration detentions are classified as seizures, in fact it is a term that began to be used in 2013 or 2014, and just from that year it begins to be used on a daily basishe added.

At the end of last year, after the accident in which 56 migrants died in a trailer, there was a pause in the operations; however, as of January 1, they increased. A week ago the INM reported the rescue of three thousand migrants in two days.

“Those of us who have worked on migration issues for decades know – and it is documented – that greater operations cannot translate into greater security for people, but vice versa.”

Nuñez explained that the more operations, the migrants are forced to resort to more extreme options to leave places like Tapachula or towns in the south of the country in search of reaching the north of Mexico or the United States, which puts them in greater danger.

He stressed that if it were a ransom, it would imply that the people are victims of a crime, for which the authorities would be obliged to automatically grant a humanitarian permit or a refugee status, since they are fleeing an act of violence.

In addition, he pointed out that the INM changed its policy of disseminating these containment measures: It seems to me that it is an attempt to dissuade, it is to send the message that it is being done, to make it visible, to say that if they come to Mexico they will be arrested.

Using interchangeably the term humanitarian rescue with immigration detentions, causes cover up crimes of trafficking, deprivation of liberty or the practice that actually happens on the part of the immigration authoritiesso you called that things are called as such to have figures for each type of crime.

In this case, he said, are the migratory stations, since he recalled that legislators sought to classify it as humanitarian assistance centers, but that in practice they are detention sites for migrants with irregular stay.