About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.
After walking for a pair weeks through southern Mexico with tons of of other migrants, they accepted a proposal from immigration officials to return to Acapulco with the thought they may proceed their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they found themselves stuck on Monday.
Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to maintain them removed from the U.S. border, while concurrently limiting what number of accumulate in anyone place.
The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has change into the middle of the Mexican government’s immigration policy lately and last yr succeeded in significantly reducing the variety of migrants reaching the U.S. border, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former chief of Mexico’s immigration agency.
Mexico’s current administration hopes that the lower numbers will give them some defense from Trump’s pressures, said Guillen, who left the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after Trump threatened to impose tariffs over migration during his first presidency.
Acapulco would appear to be a wierd destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the town now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and remains to be struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.
On Monday, Mexican tourists enjoyed the ultimate hours of their holiday beach vacations while migrants slept on the street or tried to search out ways to resume their journeys north.
“Immigration (officials) told us they were going to present us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days and it wasn’t like that,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us dumped here with none approach to get out. They won’t sell us (bus) tickets, they won’t sell us anything.”
Castañeda, like hundreds of other migrants, had left the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. More than a half dozen caravans of about 1,500 migrants each have set out from Tapachula in recent weeks, but none of them made it very far.
Authorities allow them to walk for days until they’re exhausted after which offer to bus them to varied cities where they are saying their immigration status shall be reviewed, which could mean any variety of things.
Some have landed in Acapulco, where a couple of dozen sleep at a Catholic church near the immigration agency offices.
Several dozen gathered outside the offices Monday searching for information, but nobody would tell them anything. Castañeda, who had just received money from his family and was desperate to go away, picked a van driver he judged to be probably the most trustworthy amongst various offering rides for as much as five times the conventional price for a bus ticket to Mexico City
Some migrants have discovered the permits authorities give them allow them to travel only throughout the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is situated. Other migrants have higher luck.
On Sunday, the most recent migrant caravan broke up after tons of received free transit permits to go anywhere in Mexico for a specified variety of days.
Cuban Dayani Sánchez, 33, and her husband were amongst them.
“We’re just a little scared by the shortage of safety getting on buses, that they’re going to stop us,” she said. Mexico’s drug cartels incessantly goal migrants for kidnapping and extortion, though many migrants say authorities extort them too.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum insists her immigration strategy has a “humanitarian” focus, and has allowed more migrants to go away southernmost Mexico. But some migration advocates note that migrants are being taken to violent areas.
It’s a priority shared by the Rev. Leopoldo Morales, the priest on the Catholic church in Acapulco near the immigration agency office.
He said that in November two or three immigration agency buses arrived with migrants, including entire families. Last weekend, two more arrived carrying all adults.
Even though Acapulco isn’t on the standard migration route and was unprepared to receive migrants, several priests have coordinated support for them with water, food and clothing. “We know they’re going through a really difficult time, with a variety of needs, they arrive without money,” Morales said.
Migrants quickly realize that finding work in Acapulco is difficult. After Otis’ destruction, the federal government sent tons of of soldiers and National Guard troops to supply security and begin reconstruction. Last yr, one other storm, John, brought widespread flooding.
But violence in Acapulco hasn’t relented.
Acapulco has one in every of Mexico’s highest rates of homicides. Cab drivers and small business owners complain – anonymously – of rising extortion. Large corporations have balked at rebuilding under the present circumstances.
Honduran Jorge Neftalí Alvarenga was grateful to have escaped the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border, but was already disillusioned.
“To an extent they lied to us,” said Alvarenga, who thought he was going to Mexico City. “We asked for an agreement to send us to (Mexico City) for work” or other places like Monterrey, an industrial city within the north with more work opportunities.
Now he doesn’t know what to do.
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Associated Press author Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.
