Migrants, economic interests and pressure from Donald Trump: Mexico is divided and will be increasingly crushed.
The 12-year-old Hillary and her two younger brothers
In the case of Altagracia Tamayo, the house is full. 141 refugees from Central America is home to the sprightly activist in the 30 rooms of their rented accommodation in the Northern Mexican city of Mexicali. And often nothing is left of it, as newcomers away.
Fortunately, your colleague, Santiago Reygoza has rented recently at an old Theater in the vicinity and to the refugee accommodation, where you can send now, especially young men. The dilapidated Theater is not the ideal place, but better than in the scorching desert town of hot sleeping in the Park. What happens sometimes.
In 2000, berths for migrants in the border town. However, as well as in neighboring Tijuana, you are just slow, since the refugees come in caravans, the United States will send more people back to Mexico, to the safe third country declared.
Migrants are an easy prey for smugglers, drug dealers and pimps
This means that even asylum seekers don’t have to wait any longer in the USA but in Mexico to answer – and the months. Often without papers, without a steady Job without claim to a School or place of study. Easy prey for smugglers, drug dealers and pimps.
At the same time, the Mexican government has cut support for all of the privately operated, non-profit institutions, from the children’s crib hostel up to the Refugee. For Tamayo, the Raise of donations since then has been a challenge. The solidarity of the local population dwindles, the more the sight of begging migrants to the habit, or under the pressure of xenophobic propaganda campaigns of right-wing groups on the Internet.
The majority of Hostels have no choice than to demand of the migrants for a small fee for the accommodation to be able to least amount of electricity, rent and water.”On the border of a time brewing bomb,” warns Tamayo.
Migrants from Central America wait in a refugee hostel in Mexicali
There is nothing else left than the escape
The US border is only a few hundred metres away from the pink-colored property. However, for most migrants this is a dangerous Odyssey from their home countries here. For the 12-year-old Hillary Velasquez, has to leave with her mother and two younger brothers in February with a refugee caravan Honduras.
The slim, vivacious Hillary liked one of the bosses of the criminal youth gangs in their hometown of San Pedro Sula. He asked your mother to pass it to him. What would be the means, was Hillary clearly: rape, early pregnancy, school drop-out. You want to be a nurse like her mother.
The family moved to another city, but the gangs are everywhere and networked presence. Also there, they were tracked down. A police report would have been a death sentence in a country where the state and the police make common cause with organized crime. The family had no other choice than a hasty escape.
“We get first asylum, if we are dead”
Family Velasquez has applied for asylum, the first hearing is at the end of may – not in the U.S. location Calexico, on the other side of Mexicali, but in the 200 km away in San Diego. Hillary is desperate. “How do we get there without money? Why put so many obstacles in the way? I think we get first asylum, if we are dead.”
The frustration is Hillary. The worst part of their whole escape the many hours of walking were not for them, under a blazing sun, to deport the threats of Mexican police officers or the nights under plastic sheets. “The worst part is the Wait so close to the goal,” says Hillary.
“This is a war of attrition tactic, so that the asylum seekers give up,” says Kelly Overton of the U.S. organization of Border Kindness. This mainly supports children with food and medicines, and helps families through the enemy’s red tape jungle of the Mexican and US authorities.
The United States is obliged under the Constitution to grant asylum. However, U.S. President Donald Trump’s new harassment of a fall on an almost daily basis, as this is not a levering – by, he wants to make applications for asylum for a fee, for example. And Mexico is not a multi-device, increasingly under the wheels, although the Bulk of the refugees comes not from Mexico, but mainly from Central America, so the countries that were destabilized in the 80s by the proxy wars of the United States.
Mexico is not an Option for Central Americans
Mexico as a transit country has the black Peter: If President Andres Manuel López Obrador to respect the UN Convention and the rights of migrants, will Trump angry and threatening to close the common border, of the 80 percent of Mexico depend on foreign trade.
He deported migrants, applauded Trump and protest the UN and human rights organizations. Lopez Obrador is trying to square the circle: “Stay in Mexico” is the name of the program that he wants promises to be refugees in Mexico, you have a right to stay and a job, if you stay in the southern States. However, the idea has a hitch: it doesn’t work.
Altagracia Tamayo believes that the Situation in the border town of Mexicali is untenable.
The refugees want to lure in the USA, where higher wages and, often, members of life. The US-President to appease, Mexico, the migrants now in the South of the country. In internment, they will hold camps with promises of visas and work. A close-knit network of controls on roads to prevent them from illegally traveling to the North.
Who is without a visa on the road, risking the Deportation
Mexico as a pre-border post – this is the role that had already taken predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto. But for the left itself as humanists the López Obrador understand this is unpleasant.
At the end of April, it came in one of the camps of the uprising, hundreds of refugees lost in the cramped installations, the nerves and the patience. The images of police officers, the mothers snatched their child consider, in order to prevent the escape, were dramatic. You were not groundless like a prison break. After all, who is without a visa on the road, you risk Deportation, and must hide like a criminal.
13.643 migrants deported to Mexico in January alone, and February – more than the United States. “The refugees are a pawn in the game of politics,” says Tamayo. “They can win elections, and the security industry jobs to cobble” for trump’s favorite project, the border wall. “But you will not stop all of it, because most of the refugees have no other choice.”