MEXICO CITY, April 25 (Reuters) – An imminent change in the United States border policy could increase pressure on the detention system migrants in Mexico and generate more reports of human rights abuses, experts warned, after a fire that left 40 dead.
On May 11, a coronavirus pandemic-era health order known as Title 42, which has allowed the United States to quickly return migrants from their home country, is set to expire. southern border to Mexico.
That is expected to lead to a large increase in the number of migrants trying to cross the border, and the United States is likely to lean on Mexico to immigration controls stricter, like arrests and deportationssaid five political experts consulted by Reuters.
The President’s Government Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador began increasing interceptions of migrants in 2019 under pressure from former President Donald Trump.
The administration of Joe Biden has continued that momentum, experts said. The United States achieved a record 2.2 million apprehensions at the common border last year, including a growing number of citizens from countries like Venezuela and Cuba.
In 2022, Mexico detained more than 444,000 migrants, 44% more than in 2021. According to data from last year, the National Institute of Migration (INM) operated 57 detention centers with a capacity for 6,878 people throughout the country.
“The (Biden) administration recognizes that, right now, they really need Mexico as a partner in their compliance efforts,” said Maureen Meyer, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
Now the early termination of Title 42 is raising concerns among human rights advocates, who say they have already seen that Mexico’s drive to retain immigrants leads to inconsistent ad-hoc practices that have fueled rights violations.
They point to the deadly March 27 fire at a migrant detention center in northern Ciudad Juárez as a warning sign.
“Last year the actions of the INM were brutal, we saw an accelerated increase in human rights violations,” said July Rodríguez, a member of the institute’s Citizen Council, which tracks Mexico’s immigration policies and offers proposals on how to protect the rights of migrants.
“We believe that this year it will multiply, coupled with what happened in Juárez,” he added.
In 2022, more than 2,000 complaints were filed against the INM with the Mexican National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), almost double the number of the previous year.
The alleged violations included inadequate medical care, wrongful detention, cruel treatment, and intimidation. Most filed in the southern state Chiapas, where Mexico has concentrated its immigration containment efforts. The complaints do not establish that the INM was necessarily at fault.
In response to the points raised in this article, the institute said that it is committed to safeguarding the rights of migrants, aims to promote legal migration, and operates within the law. He added that his detention centers are equipped to care for them and defended his record in handling the increase in migrants in Mexico.
“No government in the world has shown as much attention to irregular migration as Mexico, however the exponential increase in these migratory flows has exceeded the majority of governments that receive migrants,” Héctor Martínez, who coordinates the INM offices nationwide.
In recent years, the institute has closed some immigration detention centers due to poor hygiene and security conditions. It has offered humanitarian visas to victims who survived the fire in Ciudad Juárez.
President Biden’s administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on fears that increased law enforcement in Mexico could lead to more abuses.
Activists have called for the end of Title 42, criticizing the measure for blocking access to asylum.
Although López Obrador promised a more humanitarian approach to migration when he took office in late 2018, he quickly deployed the National Guard to work with the INM on immigration containment, under pressure from the Trump administration.
The Mexican president put a long-time ally, Francisco Gardunoin charge of the INM, who at the beginning of his mandate said that he would deport migrants “even if they are from Mars.”
Garduño is now under criminal investigation for failing to protect the migrants who died in the fire. Several other institute officials face murder charges.
The INM has not commented on the allegations and Garduño could not be reached directly.
The surge in detentions has overwhelmed a system ill-equipped to handle more people, said Alberto Xicotencatl, who runs a migrant shelter in the northern city of Saltillo.
“We have thousands of migrants detained at the borders, throughout the country, without appropriate shelters, without food, without health, without work, without anything,” he said.
Reuters was unable to verify how many migrants are currently in Mexico.
The CNDH also stepped up its own rebukes against the INM, calling for remedies in 30 abuse cases in 2022, up from four the previous year. The INM told Reuters it is working to correct the violations.
In two cases, the commission blamed immigration agents for using excessive force to detain migrants, including using a taser and beating a migrant. He also accused the agents of putting down the protests through violence and mistreatment, including leaving the migrants outside in heavy rain and, in another case, physically assaulting them in the detention center bathrooms.
The INM said that it does not equip agents with equipment that could harm the migrants and that possible cases of excessive force.
The CNDH he also denounced several immigration facilities for poor conditions, citing overcrowding, overflowing toilets and extreme heat. The institute said that the centers have “all the services” necessary to accommodate them.
After the fire, and with more migrants expected to travel through Mexico once Title 42 is lifted, rights groups are monitoring any signs of abuse, Rodríguez warned.
“We have to continue to see how they can help people, how to be in the country without their human rights being violated,” he said.
