Migration to Mexico is sky-rocketing. So are abuses by security forces
UN Refugee Agency asks for better treatment of asylum seekers, which increased by more than 40% last year
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Mexico has long had a troubled relationship with migration. In recent years, it has increasingly become a destination country for migrants across the world. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), it now ranks among the top-ten countries in the world for asylum claims.
That influx, however, has increasingly been met with human rights violations on the part of security forces, which have engaged in extortion, sexual assault, and even massacres of migrant convoys in the country.
Mexico has long acted as an enforcer for U.S. migration policy, a dynamic that increased under the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden — a dynamic that led to more migrant deaths and disappearances in Mexico, according to Human Rights Watch.
Trump has doubled down on those policies, demanding an increased Mexican military presence near the U.S. border and that Mexico accept “third-country” deportees expelled as part of his mass deportation policies.
In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, Mexico received 5,446 foreigners deported from the United States. President Claudia Sheinbaum claims in public statements that this has been “for humanitarian reasons”, not because of any formal agreement.
It seems clear, however, that an informal deal exists between the two North American leaders.
Mexico has also received 38,757 of its own citizens as part of deportations carried by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to data from Mexican migration officials.
Meanwhile, at Mexico’s southern border, tens of thousands of migrants arrive yearly, with many facing long waits, or a “chutes and ladders” system where they attempt to travel north, are detained and shipped south within Mexico before simply continuing north again, and being detained and shipped back again.
The Mexican government has been ambiguous on its position over whether the thousands of undocumented migrants currently travelling through the country will be allowed to stay
In the meantime, migration officers and security forces continue to disperse migrant caravans and detain many migrants at detention centers, from which are sent back to their countries of origin.
Most of them, however, are released due to policy changes enacted after a fire at a migrant detention center near the northern border killed dozens of migrants being held there. For those migrants who remain in Mexico, the procedures for obtaining legal residency are long, laborious, and uncertain.
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