“They are not going to pass. Piedras Negras is very hot, if they are arrested they are going to be returned to Cuba,” warned a coyote José Martínez and Yaritzabel Pérez. The couple, originally from Camagüey, entered Mexico on February 23 through the state of Chiapas, bordering Guatemala.
After five days in Ciudad Hidalgo, he tells 14ymedio Martínez, they were given a humanitarian visa in a migratory delegation in which hundreds of Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Guatemalans spend the night to be treated first.
“The agents come down from the kennels –Immigration vans– and they threaten to stop you,” denounces this 26-year-old Cuban. “During the day they pass four times, they take some of them and they threaten those of us who stayed to get on the next one. It’s psychological torture for people, until you pay them to give you a visitor’s visa that allows you to stay in the country for 180 days. We gave 300 dollars.”
On February 28, the couple moved from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula. “That night we planned to travel to Mexico City. On the bus there were seven other Cubans, six Nicaraguans and several Venezuelans. Before leaving, the military arrived and took us off because they had to check our papers.”
What they thought would take hours spread to days. The National Guard delivered the documentation to Immigration and it was held until March 15 at the Tapachula Delegation. They spent those days sleeping on cardboard and eating sausages in the Bicentennial Park, along with several migrants.
They arrived in the country’s capital on March 17. Before getting off, the bus driver recommended that they not stay in the terminal, because Immigration was detaining all foreigners, and that they avoid forming groups, because they are the first to be detected.
They took refuge in a hotel near the North Terminal until the 21st, when they boarded a bus bound for Veracruz. From there they would go to Tamaulipas, where they intended to reach the municipality of Miguel Alemán to cross the Rio Grande to Roma, in Texas. “They stopped the bus at a checkpoint and the agents reviewed papers and detained 28 migrants,” says Martínez, who was taken to the Puebla immigration station.
He was held there for 23 days. “They gave Yaritzabel his papers so that he could continue on his way, because I was going to stay because I had altered documentation.” After a week, the young Cuban woman was allowed to see her partner for five minutes. A lawyer named Estela Albores approached her and asked for $1,500 to free him.
After several meetings, Albores accepted $700 and Martínez left the terminal with a 20-day safe-conduct to leave the country, which expired on Wednesday. José and Yaritzabel are now in the state of San Luis Potosí, waiting for money to be sent from relatives living in Miami, to pay $3,500 to a coyote for taking them to a border point.
Sonia Mejía, originally from Corozal, in Belize, coincided with Martínez at the immigration station in Puebla. “That thing about the visa is a lie, Mexico is closing the passage to migrants. The police stopped me at the ADO terminal and took my papers because I did not give them 1,000 pesos. They called Migration and I was locked up with my daughter for 20 days “.
They asked Mejía for 1,500 dollars to return her papers and release her, she only got 600, which she deposited in a Western Union account, “they gave me my identification and a piece of paper in which they warned me that if I didn’t leave the country, they would arrest me again.” They would deport me.”
A week before the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, met with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, and announced that “Mexico was not going to be allowed became a country where anyone passes”, Migration was informed of the support of more elements of the National Guard and the Army in the state of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Veracruz, in addition to Chiapas.
In four days, Migration reported on April 25, 5,688 irregular migrants were detained, 942 of them Cubans. “A fence was erected along the central route to combat migrant smuggling,” a source told this newspaper. “False visas, licenses and voter credentials have been detected. When in doubt, people are taken to the nearest estancia and remain there until the authenticity of the documents is verified.”
The Immigration agent acknowledged that the numbers of exit safe-conducts increased, but “it is because they are being deceived by people who sell them invalid papers.”
In the central zone of Mexico, 44 Cubans were detained between May 3 and 4. Last Tuesday, 275 undocumented immigrants were found in a trailer on the highway that goes from Puebla to Córdoba. A fan and two holes in the roof of the unit box prevented these people from suffocation. In the group were 16 Cubans who, after receiving medical attention They were taken to the Acayucan checkpointwhere dozens of compatriots are still waiting to be released or deported.
That same day, in the municipality of Magdalena Tlaltelulco, in the state of Tlaxcala, the police detained 27 Cubans, which were in a commercial premises. The smuggler managed to escape, while those arrested will be transferred to Tabasco for deportation.
This Wednesday, Immigration detained a Cuban who was traveling on a bus along with 26 other undocumented immigrants. The vehicle was intercepted on federal highway 117Din the direction of Texmelucan, Puebla.
In the municipality of Huixtla, Chiapas, an abandonment of trucks by the authorities was attended. Upon arrival at the scene, the municipal police found 56 irregular migrants, including five Cubans, who had been summoned to take them out of the state for 500 pesos.
The arrival of Cubans is also noted in Yucatan, where the rescue of eight rafters was reported. “There is talk of agreements with the United States to address the migratory issue, but they are not clear about the future of the Cubans, the Nicaraguans, the Venezuelans, they are already being returned to Mexico. They do not say anything about the Haitians either, these people are forgotten in Chiapas, they don’t give them papers and they keep them deceived with visas that don’t arrive,” he tells 14ymedio Irineo Mujica, from the organization for the defense of migrants Pueblo Sin Frontera.
Mujica believes that the migration issue has not been addressed. Joe Biden “has water up to his neck” and what he is doing is forcing Mexico to “do the dirty work of stopping migration.”
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