The Government of Mexico extended the deployment of security forces to ranches near the Rio Grande to dismantle networks of coyotes and stem the flow of migrants, many of them Cuban. This Wednesday’s mobilization takes place in the midst of claims against President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the face of impunity for the murders of 11 Mexican journalists so far this year.
Last Tuesday they were riddled in the state of Veracruz, Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, director of the portal The Truthful and the journalist Sheila Johana García Olivera. “By conviction –or reputation– it cannot be tolerated that a democracy coexists with a butchery of journalists”, He pointed out on his social networks Pedro Vaca Villarreal, rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Vaca, who last February asked López Obrador to end Who’s who in the lies -a section in which the work of the media generally opposed to the president is exhibited-, for contributing to the violence of the journalistic union, has also manifested itself for “adopting urgent measures to eradicate violence against women in the face of the resurgence of femicides and disappearances in the country”.
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) joined López Obrador’s demands, urging “immediate attention to this serious situation that mourns journalism.” and he advanced it’s a statement that he will send a delegation to Washington (USA) on May 24, to address, among other issues, “the violence against the Mexican union.”
López Obrador, on the other hand, in coordination with the governors of the states of Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, ordered the sending of more elements to the immigration control posts, reinforce the Migration checkpoints on highways with military and National Guard elements, add to surveillance operations for the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) and carry out aerial tours in helicopters.
“The direct order is to detain migrants in an irregular situation,” he confirmed to 14ymedio a source from the National Migration Institute (INM). “Last week, 1,940 illegal immigrants were detained at different highway points, 316 of Cuban origin.”
In Piedras Negras “85 of the so-called smugglers in flagrante delicto,” they boast in the office of the State Public Security Secretary, Sonia Villarreal Pérez, when consulted by this newspaper. “250 elements of the Coahuila Police, with 47 ground vehicles and a helicopter, are monitoring supported by the Mexican army”.
The surveillance is part of the Operative Mirror that the governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila, Miguel Riquelme, agreed with his counterpart, the Republican Greg Abbott, to whom an investigation from Washington Post points out that he had diverted 1,000 million dollars intended for the covid-19 pandemic to the program Operation Lone Star focused on stopping migrants at the border.
As part of that investigation, Sarah Hicks, an adviser to Abbott, acknowledged a transfer of $480,000,000 and said that the Republican’s strategy was an effort to “maximize that use” of federal funds in public health for the “benefit” of the state coffers.
That “maximizing” of resources was for the placement of barbed wire on the banks of the Rio Grande. Abbott intends to place another part of this material in the lower areas of the flow to prevent the passage of Cubans and other migrants.
The results in Coahuila of the so-called Operative Mirror, despite the enthusiasm in the State Public Security, have not been as satisfactory as expected. Of between 1,500 and 2,000 migrants who crossed the Rio Grande a day, “last weekend 2,658 people were detained, 294 Cubans, who passed through Piedras Negras,” he told 14ymedio the lifeguard of Grupo Beta, Martín Solares.
The Border Patrol shared this Sunday to the Beta group data on the arrest in 15 hours of 389 people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru. “They arrested three groups that passed through the community of Normandy, in Piedras Negras and came from the El Moral ejido. They were taken by bus to Eagle Pass to face the immigration protocols,” said the lifeguard.
Solares also specified the rescue of a migrant of Cuban origin, who due to the signs and clothing provided by his relatives, who crossed into the United States, would be Juan Miguel Matamoros Cagides. Relatives confirmed to 14ymedio that this Wednesday cousins of the young man from Pinar del Río went to the border to identify the body and see the procedures for a possible transfer to the Island, where his parents are.
From last October to March 31, 195,289 migrants have been found in the Del Río sector, Texas.
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