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On January 21, Mexico’s government said that it halted a caravan of undocumented Central Americans migrants who crossed the Suchiate river into Mexico, and said others who attempt to enter the country illegally will face the same consequences.
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said about 1,000 people crossed the country’s southern border from Guatemala on Monday.
Mexico’s National Migration Institute ( INM ) said it deported 219 migrants to Honduras by plane in two separate flights. Ebrard said another 144 people were sent by bus.
“These two flights are the first of the year and we expect to carry out more in the coming days,” Mexico’s Migration Institute said.
On Monday, Mexico’s Migration Institute said it detained 402 migrants and transferred them to immigration stations where they received food, water, and shelter. They will be deported to their home countries by airplane or bus if their legal status cannot be resolved.
“We do not know if another group will arrive and, if so, we will have the same type of response,” Ebrard said at a news conference on Tuesday.
On Monday, Mexican security forces clashed with the Central American migrants who crossed into Mexico, in a chaotic scramble that saw mothers separated from their young children.
The Human Rights Observation and Monitoring Collective in Southeast Mexico, a collective of aid groups, said it spoke to an “upset” woman being escorted by an INM official and National Guard soldier who had lost track of her son and daughter.
“The woman said that when she was detained she asked the officers to let her go find her 5-year-old daughter, but they didn’t let her do so and she lost contact with her,” the collective said in a statement.
Later, the attorney general’s office for the state of Chiapas , where the migrants had crossed into Mexico, said it had located two Honduran minors .
However, a spokeswoman at the INM said there are now no reports of lost minors.
On Tuesday morning, President López Obrador told a news conference that the operations to control the flow of migrants at the country’s southern border were meant to protect them.
On January 22, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the clashes between Central American migrants and members of the National Guard were an “isolated case” and that security forces are instructed not to use violence ; however, Mexican security forces did fire tear gas at groups of rock-hurling Central American migrants.
Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero
said Mexico will not allow migrants to transit Mexico and grant them safe passage in order to reach the United States and seek asylum . Instead, Mexican authorities have offered them 4,000 jobs and to seek asylum in Mexico.
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