Mexican officials clear border tent camp as US pressure mounts to stem migrant influx
MATAMOROS, Mexico — A shabby migrant tent camp next to the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, lies far from the country's National Palace, where a top-level US delegation met with Mexico's president, seeking more action to stem the wave of migrants crossing the to curb US border reaching.
But as Mexican officials in Matamoros worked with bulldozers on Wednesday to clear what they said were abandoned tents, it was likely a sign of things to come.
The United States has sent clear signals — temporarily closing key crossings into Texas — that Mexico must do more to prevent migrants from jumping to the border on freight cars, buses and trucks.
Mexico, desperate to reopen border crossings for its manufactured goods, is starting to show signs of some action.
This was on display in Matamoros when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held talks with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City.
Migrants established the encampment in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, in late 2022. It once housed as many as 1,500 migrants, but many tents were cleared in recent months as migrants crossed the river to reach the United States.
Segismundo Doguín, head of the local office of the Mexican Immigration Service, said: “What we are doing is removing all the tents that we see empty.”
But a Honduran migrant who would give only his first name, José, claimed that some of the 200 remaining migrants were virtually forced to leave the camp when the clearing operation began late Tuesday.
“They ran us away,” he said, saying migrants had to clear their tents and belongings at short notice and felt intimidated by the bulldozers tearing through the tents. “You had to run for your life to avoid an accident.”
Some migrants moved to a gated area of the encampment where immigration officials said they could move, but fear pervaded them.
About seventy migrants threw themselves into the river and crossed into the US on Tuesday evening. They remained trapped along the riverbank for hours under the layers of concertina wire laid by order of the Texas governor.
There are few options for the migrants asked to leave the encampment, said Glady Cañas, founder of a Matamoros-based nongovernmental group, Ayudandoles a Triunfar, or Helping Them Win.
“The truth is that the shelters are saturated,” Cañas said.
She worked at the encampment Wednesday afternoon, walking through the tents and encouraging migrants to avoid illegally entering the U.S., especially after several people drowned trying to swim across the river in recent days.
This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested daily at the southwestern U.S. border. The US is struggling to process thousands of migrants at the border and house them once they reach northern cities.
The Mexican industry was hammered last week when the U.S. briefly closed two crucial railroad crossings in Texas, arguing that Border Patrol agents should be redeployed to deal with the surge. A non-railway crossing remained closed in Lukeville, Arizona, and border operations were partially suspended in San Diego and Nogales, Arizona.
Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said after the talks in Mexico City that the Mexican government's priority is to get the United States to reopen border crossings closed due to the flow of migrants.
“We talked about the importance of the border, and about the economic relationship… the importance of reopening the border crossings, that is a priority for us,” Bárcena said after the meeting, which was also attended by the US Secretary of Homeland Security , Alejandro. Mayorkas and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall.
Mexico already has more than 32,000 soldiers and National Guard troops — about 11% of the total force — tasked with enforcing immigration laws.
But the shortcomings of Mexico's efforts were on display Tuesday, when National Guard members made no attempt to stop about 6,000 migrants, many from Central America and Venezuela, from passing through Mexico's main domestic immigration inspection point in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, to walk.
In the past, Mexico has allowed such migrant caravans through, confident they would tire themselves walking along the highway.
On Wednesday, Lazara Padrón Molina, 46, from Cuba, was sick and exhausted. The caravan left the town of Tapachula on Sunday and had walked about 75 kilometers through the heat to Escuintla in the southern state of Chiapas.
“The route is too long to continue walking. Why don't they just give us the documents so we can take a bus or taxi?” said Padron Molina. “Look at my feet,” she said, showing blisters. “I can't go any further.”
But exhausting the migrants — by forcing Venezuelans and others to hike through the jungles of the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama or by taking migrants from passenger buses in Mexico — no longer appears to be working.
So many migrants have been hopping freight trains through Mexico that one of the country's two main railroads halted the trains in September over safety concerns. Police raids to remove migrants from train cars — the kind of action Mexico took a decade ago — could be something the U.S. delegation would like to see.
The railroad closures in Texas disrupted freight moving from Mexico to the U.S., as well as grain needed to feed Mexican livestock moving south.
López Obrador says he is willing to help, but wants the United States to send more development aid to migrants' home countries, reduce or eliminate sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, and start a U.S.-Cuba dialogue.
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Associated Press writers Edgar H. Clemente and Mark Stevenson contributed to this report
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