Mexico knows how to keep people out of their country because they have done it before.  According to a 2015 report by the Migration Policy Institute, “The United States and Mexico apprehended nearly 1 million Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran migrants from 2010-2015, deporting more than 800,000 of them, including more than 40,000 children.”

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“While the United States led in pace and number of apprehensions of Central Americans in 2010-2014, Mexico pulled ahead in 2015.  Amid increasingly muscular enforcement by Mexico, U.S. apprehensions of Central Americans for fiscal 2015 to date have fallen by more than half compared to the prior year.  Many of those who previously would have made it to the U.S. border and been apprehended by the Border Patrol now are being intercepted by Mexican authorities.”  Read the entire report here. 

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The rise of apprehensions in Mexico was a result of Programa Frontera Sur (PFS), aka the Southern Border Program, which then-president of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto implemented in 2014 under intense pressure from the United States.

 

Sounds like a promising way to decrease the number of unauthorized Central Americans who pass through Mexico on their way to America, right?

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Not so fast.  There is a huge downside to this crackdown: Many migrants have simply sought alternative, but much more dangerous, routes.  As a result, bribes and smugglers fees have significantly increased.

 

Much more concerning, this has also led to massive breaches in humanitarian protection.  Reuters reported that “in the year through June 2015, Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) logged 567 complaints of abuse by officials at the National Migration Institute (INM), up by 39 percent from the previous 12-month period.”

 

​Three years after the implementation of PFS, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a research and advocacy organization, reported that “crimes and abuses against migrants traveling through Mexico continue to occur at alarming rates, and shelters have noted a more intense degree of violence in the cases they document.”  

 

“While Mexico’s major organized criminal groups do not operate heavily in the Tenosique corridor, smaller criminal bands and Central American gang affiliates routinely rob, kidnap, and sexually assault migrants along this portion of the migration route.  Migrant rights organizations in southern Mexico documented an increase in cases of migration and police authorities’ abuse of migrants as a result of the Southern Border Program, including recent accounts of migration agents, who are supposed to be unarmed, using pellet guns and electrical shock devices.”  Read the entire report here.

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Five years on, WOLA found that “migrants transiting through southern Mexico continue to suffer assault, robbery, rape, and kidnapping at the hands of organized crime or common criminals…migrant rights defenders in Tenosique, Tabasco did report an alarming uptick in serious crimes against migrants, such as sexual violence and brutal kidnappings. Shelters and organizations that support victims who have filed criminal complaints before prosecutor’s offices reported to us that prosecutors have taken little action to investigate these crimes or combat these criminal trends.”  Read the entire report here.

 

This is unacceptable.  These issues must be addressed with Mexico before any future agreements are reached.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evidence:

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Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas and Victoria Rietig.  "Migrants Deported from the United States and Mexico to the Northern Triangle: A Statistical and
   Socioeconomic Profile."  Migration Policy Institute.  September 2015

Tim Smyth.  "Abuse of Migrants in Mexico Rises Even as Numbers Fall."  Reuters.  16 Oct 2015

Adam Isacson, Maureen Meyer, and Hannah Smith.  "Mexico's Southern Border:  Security, Central American Migration, and U.S. Policy."  The Washington
   Office on Latin America (WOLA).  June 2017

Maureen Meyer and Adam Isacson.  "The Wall Before the Wall:  Mexico's Crackdown on Migration at its Southern Border."  The Washington Office on Latin
   America (WOLA).  December 2019