The caravan with thousands of migrants that advanced through southern Mexico in order to reach the United States reached an agreement with immigration authorities who promised Multiple Migratory Forms, which will allow undocumented immigrants to travel freely in the country for at least 30 days.
After the agreement, reached on Friday night, the nearly 1,500 foreigners agreed to board trucks provided for them by the National Migration Institute (INM) and hope to soon be able to obtain the documents that will allow them to be in Mexican territory and reach the northern border to cross into the United States.
Between shoving, shouting and desperation, the Mexican authorities gave in and put buses to transfer migrants to the migration checkpoint who made up a caravan that walked more than 100 kilometers and managed to reach Mapastepec, in the southeastern state of Chiapas, in search of visas. humanitarian.
At night, the staff of the INM Beta Group and elements of the National Guard put vulnerable groups made up of children and women in trucks to take them to the Huixtla checkpoint and take them to a shelter so that on Monday they can begin their regularization process.
In a first block, around 240 people got on the trucks amid the jostling and an outburst between the migrants who wanted the lists to be respected and to be able to access transportation.
uncertainty prevails
Yovany Barona, migrant from Venezuelaindicated that there are about 1,500 people who will be transferred to the migration checkpoint.
“We still don’t know what will happen, we are organizing ourselves to see what we can do, if the visas are equivalent to moving forward we can, if not we are going to take a break in Mexico City,” he said.
José Morales, a Honduran migrant who was advancing with the caravan, indicated that they were told that documents would be granted to the migrant families and later to the men who were waiting for the buses sent by the Mexican government.
“We are grateful that they take us out of here, but for now we don’t know, we are believing that they will give us the papers,” he said.
Jonathan Pichardo, also a Venezuelan, said that he feels disappointed in the Mexican authorities “because we have to put pressure to make ourselves felt.”
This South American narrated that for two months he has been walking with his two children and has traveled through Latin America and Central America where they had not had as many problems as they have found in Mexico.
The federal authorities will continue to attend to the migrants in a checkpoint overwhelmed by hundreds of migrants who are arriving from all over the world upon learning that they are submitting the Multiple Migration Forms for 30 days.
The migration checkpoint in Huixtla will face a new migrant crisis because most of the Venezuelan population and other countries such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Central America, Nicaragua and African countries will be concentrated.
These migrant caravans reflect the migratory flow record to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30.
The Mexican government reported over the weekend an increase of 89% year-on-year in the number of migrants presented or channeled by the immigration authority in the first quarter of 2022, adding 77,626 from January to March.
Mexico deported more than 114,000 foreigners in 2021, according to data from the Migration Policy Unit, figures not seen in almost 15 years, while in fiscal year 2022, which began on October 1, 2021, the CBP has counted more than a million migrants intercepted at the US southern border.
