Protest over humanitarian visa delays outside López Obrador conference

Nestor Jimenez

Sent

Newspaper La Jornada
Saturday March 12, 2022, p. eleven

Tapachula, Chis., About 300 meters from where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered his press conference yesterday in Tapachula, hundreds of migrants demonstrated due to delays in their humanitarian visa applications.

They did it with banners and crosses in which some pretended to be crucified and chained, while others sewed up their mouths with a needle and thread. This is how they called the media attention to accuse that in the north of the country their immigration cards have been torn up and they returned to Tapachula without further explanation.

Wilberto, a Venezuelan who arrived in the country a couple of months ago, said that despite being given a licensewhich allowed him to go to Monterrey, upon arrival he ran into a checkpoint of immigration agents, who took away and tore up his documents. That that was of no use to us and we couldn’t travel with that card because it only served to be in the south, in Tapachulathey told him before sending him to an immigration station where they held him for two days.

It took a month for them to give me the papers and they tore them up in one daythe South American told altered.

Moments before the president left the military installations where the morning meeting was organized and while the migrants remained in front of different exits from the place, trucks arrived to transfer the majority to Ciudad Hidalgo, on the border with Guatemala, where they were promised that will expedite the permits.

When the units arrived there was pulling and shoving to secure a seat. A couple of representatives of the National Migration Institute (INM) shouted coordinated the ascent in the midst of the uproar and with the condition that only those who were present at the demonstration go up.

Interviewed when leaving the same military headquarters, the INM commissioner, Francisco Garduño Yáñez, warned that if the migrants leave the city without documents they could be detained.

He was asked about the allegations of corruption of which they say migrants have been victims.Report it to the control body, answered. He also justified that the bureaucratic delay is due to there are thousands and thousands of requests.

The official affirmed that he has dismissed 1,800 agents of the agency for different reasons, such as fight against corruption, absence and dishonesty. Regarding the operations of the last few months in hotels, he said that the law allows it and it is an administrative verification justified in the Constitution.

In the afternoon, the INM said that on Thursday 800 cards were delivered to people of different nationalities. To attend to the rest, it will draw up a list by name, nationality and family nucleus, in which vulnerable groups will be prioritized.

It was detailed that they will be given humanitarian visas, with which will be able to access job offers in the region for the benefit of those who started or are waiting for a procedure of refuge.

(With information from Fabiola Martínez)