Benito López/ Reform Agency
Monday, December 26, 2022 | 2:50 p.m.
Cd. Victoria, Mexico.- After the low temperatures over the weekend, the state coordination of Civil Protection reported that they transferred at least 3,600 migrants to three temporary shelters in Matamoros.
Many of the people transferred remained outdoors on the banks of the Rio Grande, while they await the processing of the United States humanitarian asylum visa.
Between last Saturday and Sunday, migration authorities with their consent transferred some 500 migrants, including minors and pregnant women, to the aforementioned shelters to protect them from the cold.
Last week, the Fecanaco of Tamaulipas asked the UN to intervene in the midst of the migrant crisis that is taking place on the border with the neighboring country to the north.
Luis Gerardo González, state coordinator of Civil Protection, said that most of the migrants concentrated in the “Mundo Nuevo” shelter.
In Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo, as well as on the small border, shelters were also set up, but they received a low number of people.
For its part, the Tamaulipas Institute for Migrants (ITM) estimates that between 8,000 and 10 foreigners live on the border, mostly Haitian nationals, waiting to enter the United States.
“But not undocumented, legally through the condition of political asylum,” said the director of the agency, Juan José Rodríguez Alvarado.
Over the weekend, after setting up the Matamoros shelters, the State provided support to migrants that included blankets and food for more than 2,000 people.
Rodríguez said that about 5,000 migrants of various nationalities arrived at the Mundo Nuevo Convention Center and are scattered along the banks of the Rio Grande.
In the face of the emergency due to low temperatures, international organizations and associations delivered a thousand blankets to migrant families.
The Ministry of Health also delivered a little more than 2,500 blankets in the different shelters in Reynosa.
The migrant crisis worsens after the “Title 42” policy that allows express deportations is expected to expire next Wednesday, after arguing the coronavirus pandemic and that former President Donald Trump started in 2020.
The State Government says that at least 14,000 migrants live on the border and that another 17,000 will arrive next year, while activists affirm that there are more than 20,000.
