“Cubans receive inhuman treatment” in the migratory stay in the border city of Piedras Negras, which is located a few meters from the International Bridge II that connects the Mexican state of Coahuila with the United States, complaint to various media Leydys Suarez. “They have them prisoners, incommunicado, with terrible food, they even pass over them to the rats.”
Suárez exposes the abuses by the Mexican authorities, who adapted a space in the headquarters of their offices to keep migrants who are detained in the vicinity of the Rio Grande. A source from the Beta rescuers group confirms to 14ymedio that this place “emerged due to the increase in arrests but does not have the infrastructure to call it a shelter.”
The complainant shows images that she has on her mobile of what they were ironically told was “the VIP area” of Immigration and in which some mats and several people crowded together can be seen. “They don’t have a bathroom, they don’t give them medicine, they have them all there. Those who are taken out are to be deported. My dad cleans himself with cloths, he is also hypertensive and they don’t have a doctor, nor have the medicines allowed us to give him.”
“They don’t have a bathroom, they don’t give them medicine, they have them all there. Those who are taken out are to be deported. My dad cleans himself with cloths, he is also hypertensive”
This Cuban resident in the US traveled 23 hours by road from Miami to the Mexican border in the company of her nephew and another Cuban named Jimmy Rodríguez to free her father Isidro and her niece, who left the island two months ago. “We didn’t know anything about them until they got in touch and said they had been detained in Piedras Negras.”
The arrest was recorded on March 16. “They stopped the bus they were on,” says the woman. “They took them down and the Venezuelans who came were allowed to continue, but they took away the Cubans’ papers and detained them.”
Since that day they have been detained in “the VIP area”. the same place where Immigration agents demand payments in exchange for not deporting Cubans even when they have permits to stay in Mexico, as happened with Ramón Tejera, his wife and daughter.
The anomalies inside the Migration offices have also been exposed by Rufino Menera, owner of the portal What others call Piedras Negraswhich has exposed the arbitrary checkpoints and detentions of migrants with permits sealed by the Ministry of the Interior, on which the National Institute of Migration depends.
In the next few hours, two groups of 120 migrants will be transferred, each to the city of Villahermosa, in the state of Tabasco, to be deported to their place of origin. In the group there are Cubans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans and Guatemalans, confirms the rescuer from Grupo Beta.
One of Leidys Suárez’s concerns is to avoid the deportation of her relatives. A lawyer processed the amparo for them, but Immigration refuses to grant them their freedom. “Come tomorrow, come the day after, it’s almost lunchtime, we’re busy with the arrests,” are some of the pretexts that the agents have given this Cuban woman.
Migration’s way of operating is similar to that prevailing in the migratory terminal of Acayucan, Veracruz, where they keep Cubans for days, and in addition to require them to pay bonds of up to 10,000 Mexican pesosthey extort them to make a call.
This Wednesday, while waiting for news from the lawyer, Leidys Suárez, her nephew and Jimmy Rodríguez were intimidated by municipal police. “We are going to check everyone’s phones to see if they have something that compromises them,” said a uniformed man.
After surrounding them, they were taken to where a National Guard unit was, despite letting the officers know that they had their papers in order. “They took me to the back and there every once in a while they told me: ‘Are you behaving well?'” says Rodríguez.
The presence of some local media and Univisión Miami prevented, say Cubans living in the US, from being taken away and put in “the VIP zone,” where women and families are crammed into mats and “men are locked in rooms through which hardly any sunlight enters,” says Rodríguez. “They don’t even know what day they live in. Since you left Cuba, the road you travel is bloody.”
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