Frustration grows for migrants stuck in southern Mexico – KIRO 7 News Seattle

TAPACHULA, Mexico – (AP) – Caribe Dorvil wakes up at 3 a.m. each day to prepare food for sale in a small street market with dozens of other Haitian migrants in this southern Mexican city.

Unable to find other work because they still do not have legal status, Dorvil and Haitian migrants sell meals, soft drinks, clothing and offer services such as haircuts, manicures and tailoring under umbrellas in the street market.

Dorvil has applied for asylum in Mexico, but the agency that handles such applications has deep support and insufficient resources to cope with the exponential increase in asylum applications over the past few years.

A few years ago, migrants like Dorvil could have quickly passed Tapachula, historically a stop on one of the main migrant routes to the north. But more recently it has become a Kafkaesque swamp of bureaucracy with no exit for thousands.

The mounting frustration resulted in hundreds of migrants leaving Tapachula this month and trying to travel north. The Mexican authorities stopped them every time, sometimes violently. Another attempted caravan was rumored for this week.

Former US President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs if it did not curb the flow of migrants to the US border. Mexico responded by sending its National Guard and other immigration officials to try to contain migrants in the south.

Given the daily images of clashes between the Mexican authorities and migrants, many of whom are traveling as families, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has shown his own frustration with the containment strategy, saying it is unsustainable.

One new morning Dorvil made spaghetti with chicken and a small side salad, which she sold in the market for about $ 2. Her usual 10-hour work day typically makes her $ 5 to $ 10.

That covers her rent – an apartment south of Tapachula that she shares with nine other migrants – and just enough food to keep her alive.

“You cannot work (here), there are no papers, there is nothing,” said Dorvil. “You have to sell to pay rent, to eat. The government doesn’t help anyone. “

Dorvil arrived in Mexico earlier this year. Like many of the Haitian migrants, she had lived in Chile for years after leaving her own country, but left when the economy stalled there during the pandemic.

She thought Mexico was better, but now she says it was worse. Her husband and two children remain in Chile but are considering going to Mexico with her, which is why she has not joined any of the groups trying to leave Tapachula.

Dorvil has a first appointment for her asylum application in mid-November. But the system is inundated with applications and it is not uncommon for someone to wait a year for their case to be processed.

The system was already behind and the pandemic slowed things down even more. More than 77,000 people have applied for protection status in Mexico this year, 55,000 of them in Tapachula. Haitians make up about 19,000 of these applicants.

Some members of the Mexican government have suggested giving Haitians – the second largest group of migrants after Honduran – an option that would allow them to look for work outside of the state of Chiapas, where Tapachula is based. But resistance remains.

The activist Luis Villagrán from the Center for Human Dignity estimates that up to 100,000 migrants are stuck in Tapachula, almost every third inhabitant of the city. They can be seen all over the city, although other groups estimate half that number.

Even for those who manage to gain legal status, Tapachula can seem inevitable.

Another Haitian migrant who refused to give his name in order to avoid consequences showed a humanitarian visa he had received in Tapachula. He traveled north to the state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas. But there a Mexican immigration officer stopped him and told him it was not valid. He was sent back to Tapachula.

“I’ve had this (visa) for a year and they sent me back here, I don’t know why,” he said recently at a protest against Mexican immigration and asylum authorities to demand that migrants be allowed to travel freely.

Enrique Vidal, coordinator of the Fray Matias de Cordoba human rights center in Tapachula, said the containment policy and the militarization of that policy had collapsed the immigration system.

“We have seen these massive mobilizations in the past few days trying to leave Tapachula,” said Vidal. “They have all started a process with the Mexican authorities, and it is the Mexican authorities that have failed to guarantee respectful and timely access to the people.”

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