MEXICO CITY – The migration irregular in Mexico shot up 77% more during 2023, compared to the previous year, according to figures released on Friday by the Mexican government, which in recent months has redoubled efforts together with the United States to contain the migratory wave.
According to data from the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior, at the end of last year a total of 782,176 “events of people in an irregular immigration situation”, which far exceeds the 441,409 cases reported in 2022.
The greatest increase was evident in the registration of migrants from Africa, which reached 59,834 last year, exceeding the figure for 2022, which was 6,672, more than eight times.
Likewise, irregular migration from South America also more than doubled to close 2023 at 345,941 cases. In the previous year, 159,511 were reported.
Within the group of South American countries, Venezuela had the largest rebound with 222,994, which represented a growth of 131.8% compared to 2022 when 96,197 were reported.
Both migration from Central America and the Caribbean showed increases of more than 17%, particularly from countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti.
Immigration rebound
The jump in the migratory flow that Mexico faced last year caused its borders to become saturated and in December more than 10,000 irregular crossings into the United States were reported daily.a situation that set off alarms and led to US authorities temporarily closing some border crossings.
After a phone call on December 21 from the US president, Joe Biden, to his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to express his concern about the migratory surge, both governments agreed to high-level meetings in Mexico City and Washington to define coordinated actions.
Repatriation of migrants
In addition, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, admitted that it was too early to know if the reduction in crossings was due to the fact that Mexico had reactivated its operations to transfer migrants from the north to the south of the country and repatriations at the beginning of the year. or if the decline was due to the season of the year.
The US government has recognized that Mexico has intensified its actions to stop the flow of migrants to its border. One of them was the reactivation of return flights for Venezuelan migrants in an irregular situation to their country of origin.
Source: AP
