A warehouse destined to store fodder was used by coyotes as a hiding place for migrants. In the building located on an embankment far from the town of San Miguel de la Victoria, in the State of Mexico, 225 people with irregular stay were located last Saturday, five Cubans among them.
Angélica María Rodríguez Varela, Isael Meléndez Castro and Junier Blanco Hernández, all Cuban nationals, were transferred to the Las Agujas immigration station in Mexico City. Immigration agents told them they would be deported.
Rodríguez and Meléndez, originally from Pinar del Río, and Blanco, from Havana, sent their testimonies to our newsroom. The 26-year-old with Passport K523299 said she was afraid that they would repatriate her to the Island where she has received threats for protesting against the regime.
Meléndez, who studied at the University of Informatics Sciences, mentioned to us that he was forced to leave Cuba after the harassment he suffered for participating in the July 11 demonstrations. “They have accused me with false testimony and they wanted to put me in jail,” he mentioned to 14ymedio.
Angélica María Rodríguez Varela, Isael Meléndez Castro and Junier Blanco Hernández were told by Immigration agents that they will be deported
Blanco asks that they be allowed to continue on their way to the United States, where “we can request asylum.” This man from Havana stressed that they have not committed any crime and his only fault was not waiting longer in southern Mexico to complete the process of requesting a free transit safe-conduct.
Minutes after they were detained by elements of the National Guard and Immigration, these Cubans had their cell phones collected and are held incommunicado in the Las Agujas ranch.
The case reached the ears of the lawyer and defender of migrants José Luis Pérez, who processed an amparo for them so that they can carry out their process in freedom, in addition to avoiding any extortion attempt by the Migration agents “so evident in the accommodation stays” illegal mainly from Cubans.
The detention of Cubans in the Migration center “has become a way of collecting money for the officials’ coffers,” stressed the litigant based in the border state of Chiapas.
In a statement from the National Migration Instituteit is indicated that the 225 irregular migrants remained crowded together waiting to be transferred by the coyotes to the border with the United States. “The people were rescued from a place where there was no light and several children were found among blankets and backpacks without any hygiene measure,” an agent told 14ymedio.
Mexico received a record of more than 58,000 refugee applications in the first half of 2022, an annual increase of almost 15%, according to the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance
Among the detained migrants are 194 from Guatemala, 14 from Honduras, nine from Nicaragua and three from El Salvador. Of the Guatemalans and Salvadorans, it was indicated that they will be returned to the south of the country.
Since October 2018, and despite the tightening of surveillance on Mexico’s southern border, thousands of migrants from Central and South America, but also from Cuba, Haiti and various African and Asian countries have entered Mexican territory with the aim of reaching To united states.
The coyotes They look for routes for foreigners and sometimes park in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla and the State of Mexico as an intermediate stop on their journey to the United States.
The region is experiencing a record migratory flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection Office has intercepted more than 1.6 million people so far in fiscal year 2022, which began last October.
In addition, Mexico received a record of more than 58,000 refugee applications in the first half of 2022, an annual increase of almost 15%, according to the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance.
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