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US-bound migrants, mostly from Central America and the Caribbean, said on Thursday that a Mexican government crackdown was keeping them “prisoner” in the south of the country.
The migrant comments contrasted with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s promises of humane treatment ahead of Thursday’s high-level meeting between Mexican and U.S. officials in Washington, where the two countries agreed that development of poor regions was a long-term solution to slow migration north.
“Mexican authorities are mistreating us migrants,” said Guillermo Rivas, 25, from El Salvador, who said he was beaten by agents while in a detention center in the southern city of Tapachula.
Mexico’s immigration agency, which runs the detention center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rivas stated that he had been in Mexico for almost five months waiting for the paperwork to allow him to travel freely within Mexico.
“Tapachula is like a prison,” he told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. “We’re asking that Mexico open its doors to allow
migrants to cross the country without danger, abuse, or mistreatment.”
Washington’s high-level negotiations focused on migration. Officials agreed to implement programs in Central America and southern Mexico to tackle the causes of immigration.
Ahead of the talks, Lopez Obrador said Mexican officials and security forces have “complete and absolute respect for human rights” of migrants and heralded the Washington discussions as the beginning of a “new stage” in migration politics.
“Today’s meeting is very important,” he said, “because there has been no attention to the population that sees it as necessary to migrate. There’s been nothing for years; everything is to contain, everything is coercive, and that’s not how to resolve social problems.
“But in the lead-up to the bilateral discussions, Mexico faced mounting pressure from Washington to take immediate steps to curtail U.S.-bound immigration, even as frustration among migrants in Tapachula boiled over and hundreds of people departed the city in a series of caravans.
Mexico responded by sending security forces including its heavily militarized National Guard to stop the terrorist groups. This included families with young children.
“I had to risk my life to avoid getting arrested,” said Max, a Haitian caravan member who declined to give his last name, as he trudged along a highway in the southeastern state of Veracruz on Wednesday.
He described the way he was forced to throw himself under a bridge so he wouldn’t be captured.
“The migration process shouldn’t be like this,” he said.The National Guard referred Reuters to Mexico’s immigration agency, which said in statements that it has suspended two agents and that the agency “condemns any aggression against migrants.”
