Insecurity and organized crime force Mexican migrants to seek safe places, such as border shelters. “Unfortunately, the arrival of migrants from Michoacán and Guerrero to the shelter has not decreased, and I believe that the same situation continues to occur in the other shelters,” said José María García Lara, director of a shelter located one kilometer from San Ysidro.
Within all the human mobility that is perceived in the border city of Tijuanathere is a sector that for several years has remained constant: those displaced by internal violence in Mexican states such as Michoacán and Guerrero, who have monopolized border shelters, a reflection of the exponential growth of organized crime in that region of the southwest of the country.
This was explained this Tuesday, June 6, by José María García Lara, director of the youth hostel 2000located just one kilometer from the border port of San Ysidro, which gives entry to the United States.
“Unfortunately, the arrival of migrants from Michoacán and Guerrero to the shelter has not decreased, and I believe that the same situation continues to occur in the other shelters, since this problem of insecurity and forced displacement has not been controlled,” he stressed in an interview with the news agency EFE.
The largest percentage of the migrants staying there are displaced Mexicans, among them several young single mothers and many children and adolescents, whom they took out of their towns for fear that they would be recruited.
The activist highlighted that, although two years ago there was a massive wave of people displaced from these states, “this does not mean that this situation has ended or that the problems in those states have been solved”, but rather, ” because now people are also leaving for forced displacement from the Chiapas community.”
“This does not seem to end, they continue to arrive, not in the same amount as before, but people and families from those states do not stop arriving daily and that speaks volumes about the situation in that region of the country,” he said.
Death threats, land charges, kidnapping, extortion, murders, and disappearances are just some of the factors why families and even entire communities have had to leave their homes and assets, not just trying to find a better future for their children, but trying to protect their integrity and their lives.
Every day is lived with violence
A young man displaced from the Mexican state of Michoacán, who decided to remain anonymous for safety, shared with EFE that in the community where he is from, every day there were various episodes of violence “that are not always published in the press” due to the same pressure that all the people in that place experience.
«There is a lot of what is the collection of floor (extortion), people have to pay floor and if they do not start with what is violence. I had a business and this is how they start, they come to you and they charge you a flat and there is no one who can be saved, it comes to everyone at the time and that makes things more difficult, “he said.
He said that he had to go out with his wife and son because of this situation, which causes him a feeling of impotence: “I was fine, because I was practically stable with my wife, I felt good, I have my degree, I am an architect and well, I say , one thinks that we should not leave just because they want to, I really did not want to leave, but they pushed us to that ».
Fear that children will be recruited
Hortensia Moreno, also originally from Michoacán, explained that she left her home state with her 14-year-old son because they tried to kidnap him twice, after her husband was also kidnapped and murdered by members of organized crime operating in the region.
What used to be calm in their communities, later began to generate “horrible fear” when organized crime began to recruit minors into their ranks: “Yes, they are taking a lot of kids, they bring them there working and that’s why they wanted my son, to work with them.”
Just like Hortensia, the biggest fear that mothers who went out with their children have was that one day they would be taken away and recruited by organized crime, which would no longer guarantee that one day they would return or even hear any news about them. , hence the reason to leave everything behind to protect them.
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