Violence broke out on Mexico’s border with Guatemala on Monday after Mexican immigration authorities denied entry to a caravan of 1000's of migr
Violence broke out on Mexico’s border with Guatemala on Monday after Mexican immigration authorities denied entry to a caravan of 1000’s of migrants, largely from Honduras.
About 4,000 migrants had requested passage by presenting a petition addressed to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the bridge throughout the Suchiate River, which connects the port of entry at Ciudad Hidalgo to Guatemala. However after authorities refused to open the gates to the port, about 500 migrants tried to cross the border by wading by the river.
In an uncommon present of power, Mexican Nationwide Guard troops carrying riot shields fired tear fuel and threw rocks on the migrants on the riverbank to cease them from crossing. The migrants threw rocks of their very own on the guardsmen, in response to NPR’s James Fredrick. Amid the chaos, Reuters reported that some families were separated.
It was one more occasion by which Mexico has sought to clamp down on Central American migrant caravans arriving at its border with Guatemala. The federal government desires to keep away from antagonizing US President Donald Trump, who in 2019 threatened to impose tariffs on all Mexican items if the nation didn’t step up its immigration enforcement efforts. Mexico additionally merely lacks the capacity to handle such massive numbers of migrants.
Simply witnessed a full on navy operation by Mexico’s Nationwide Guard in opposition to caravan migrants who walked throughout the river into Mexico. Households working and screaming. Rocks flying. Infants crying. Whole chaos. No phrase of accidents but pic.twitter.com/Hvbyqpy3IS
— James Fredrick (@jameslfredrick) January 20, 2020
In a statement Monday, the Mexican authorities accused the caravan’s leaders of directing migrants to cross the river with out contemplating how it could endanger kids and different susceptible members of the group. 5 Nationwide Guard members sustained accidents because of Monday’s scuffle, the federal government mentioned.
It’s not clear what number of migrants have been injured, however reports have indicated that no less than some have been. The Mexican authorities mentioned it has supplied medical care, together with hospitalization, to migrants who’ve requested it, together with some who appeared dehydrated.
Though some Hondurans intend to stay in Mexico and discover jobs, most of these within the caravan are seeking transit by Mexico within the hopes of reaching the US border. It’s a sign that so long as violence and financial instability continues to drive Central American migrants out of their house nations, they are going to proceed to hunt refuge within the US — irrespective of how a lot the Trump administration pressures different nations to cease them.
What’s going to occur to Hondurans within the caravan
As studies surfaced {that a} caravan was en path to the Mexican border final week, López Obrador had vowed that migrants might both request a piece allow to stay in southern Mexico legally or declare asylum, however wouldn’t be permitted to journey to the US. Now, nonetheless, it seems that no less than a number of the migrants might be deported.
With assistance from the Nationwide Guard, Mexican immigration authorities despatched over 400 of the migrants who tried to cross the border to immigration detention amenities, the place they are going to be screened to find out whether or not they have the precise to stay in Mexico or might be despatched again to Honduras. Girls and youngsters might be deported by way of airplane, whereas others will journey by way of bus, in response to the Mexican authorities.
As is customary observe in Mexico, those that declare asylum might be launched from detention and processed by the Mexican Fee for Refugee Help (COMAR). The United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), which has just lately expanded its presence in Mexico to eight workplaces, has agreed to assist COMAR determine migrants with asylum claims, a spokesperson for the company mentioned.
Honduras produces excessive numbers of individuals searching for asylum: In 2017, the newest yr for which knowledge is accessible, the US granted asylum to 2,048 migrants from Honduras, in contrast with 1,048 from Mexico, 3,471 from El Salvador, and a couple of,954 from Guatemala.
Honduras stays a hotbed of gang violence, largely perpetrated by the worldwide prison gang MS-13, which fashioned in Los Angeles and was transplanted to Central America following mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants with prison histories within the 1990s. The gangs facilitate drug trafficking, extort native residents, and power teenage boys to affix.
The nation additionally has the fifth-highest murder fee worldwide, in response to the United Nations Workplace on Medication and Crime, in addition to rampant authorities corruption and excessive charges of violence in opposition to girls and LGBTQ people.
Hondurans seemingly gained’t be capable of search asylum within the US
Migrants’ probabilities of evading Mexican authorities and being granted asylum within the US stay slim.
They could be returned to Mexico below the Trump administration’s “Stay in Mexico” coverage, formally referred to as the Migrant Safety Protocols (MPP). Greater than 56,000 migrants have been despatched again to await selections on their US asylum purposes.
The Trump administration has additionally brokered a sequence of agreements with Central America’s “Northern Triangle” nations — Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — that permit the US to ship migrants again to these nations, although the settlement with Guatemala is the one one which has gone into impact to date.
The agreements resemble “secure third-country agreements,” a not often used diplomatic device that requires migrants to hunt asylum within the nations they go by by deeming these nations able to providing them safety (although the Trump administration has been reluctant to make use of that time period). Till just lately, the US had this sort of settlement with only one nation: Canada.
The administration has sought such agreements in Central America as a method of reaching Trump’s aim of driving down the variety of migrants searching for refuge on the US-Mexico border by sending them again to the nations from which they got here and handed by. Immigrant advocates argue that doing so might have lethal penalties.