TAPACHULA, Mexico — About 2,000 migrants started strolling Monday in southern Mexico in what has turn out to be a conventional demonstration throughout Holy Week earlier than Easter to attract consideration to their plight.
Leaving Tapachula close to the Guatemalan border at daybreak, the migrants and their advocates stated their aim was to succeed in Mexico’s capital and spotlight the risks they face together with robberies, sexual assaults, extortion and kidnapping.
Mexico has practiced a containment technique lately that goals to maintain migrants in southern Mexico removed from the U.S. border. Migrants can languish there for months attempting to regularize their standing by way of asylum or different means. Migrants say there’s little work obtainable, and most carry giant money owed to smugglers.
The procession included a big white cross painted with the phrases “Christ resurrected” in Spanish. The day earlier than the march, there was a stations of the cross procession — a time for pilgrimage and reflection — throughout the river that divides Guatemala and Mexico.
Guatemalan Daniel Godoy joined the stroll on Monday together with his spouse and two youngsters after ready in Tapachula for 4 months to regularize their standing.
“There’s nonetheless no date for the cardboard, for the allow,” he stated as they walked down a rural freeway. “We determined it’s higher to come back on our personal.”
He carried his 2-year-old daughter on his shoulders and his spouse carried their 6-month-old child.
Rev. Heyman Vázquez Medina, a member of the Catholic Church’s human mobility effort, stated Mexico’s immigration coverage lacked readability. He famous that the federal government dragged its ft in granting authorized standing to cross the nation and stored migrants off public transportation, however allow them to make the exhausting trek up highways.
“They must stroll below the solar and the rain, kilometers and kilometers, affected by starvation? Who can take that?” Vázquez stated.
Mexico’s authorities has been below strain from the Biden administration to regulate the circulate of migrants to the U.S. border.
The U.S. Border Patrol encountered migrants 140,644 occasions in February, in line with knowledge launched Friday. That was up from 124,220 in January however effectively beneath the almost 250,000 encounters in December.
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