The National Migration Institute of Mexico announced 15 points in coordination with local authorities to prevent migrants from using freight trains to cross the country and reach the border with the United States. This announcement comes at a time when Mexico is facing a migration crisis and a high number of serious accidents involving migrants on these trains.
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Measures are reinforced to combat the passage of migrants on freight trains in Mexico. This Friday, September 22, the National Migration Institute (INM) published a statement agreeing on 15 actions “to prevent migrants from risking their lives when using this means of transportation with the intention of reaching the border with the United States.”
The decision was made on Friday after a meeting between local authorities and businessmen in Ciudad Juárez, bordering the United States.
Mexico is “overwhelmed” by the migration crisis, said the head of Mexican diplomacy Alicia Bárcena on Friday during her visit to New York (USA), explaining that more than 8,000 people arrive daily at Mexico’s northern border, waiting move to the United States.
Among the measures is the creation of “strategic points” to “deter” and “rescue” migrants who try to jump onto freight trains. However, it was not specified where these checkpoints would be established or how people would be deterred.
The authorities also decided to “deliver a daily report to the El Paso sector, through the INM Office in Coahuila, in order to warn that the train is going alone” and “continue with the mirror operation on the border of Mexico and the United States, interventions on railways, highway points and rescue on public roads.”
This decision came a day after the Mexican railway company Ferromex temporarily stopped 60 freight trains due to a “half-dozen unfortunate cases of injuries or deaths” of migrants who had boarded the carriages.
“There has been a significant increase in the number of migrants in recent days,” Ferromex said, explaining that it was trying to “protect the physical safety of migrants.”
Additionally, due to the high number of migrants arriving in the Texas border city of Eagle Pass, U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed a Union Pacific railroad crossing that links Texas to Mexico, detaining thousands. tons of merchandise. The road should reopen this Saturday night.
Mexico tries to stop migration
Measures for the expulsion of migrants to their countries of origin will also be reinforced, with, among other things, carrying out “proceedings with the governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia and Cuba so that they receive their fellow citizens” and the depressurization of “the northern border (Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Tijuana and Tamaulipas) through the return of migrants,” the statement explains.
On the other hand, it is planned to improve care for migrants already present in Ciudad Juárez with the establishment of “open-door shelters in Ciudad Juárez to serve migrants, especially girls, boys and adolescents.”
According to the INM, its agents detained about 9,000 migrants a day this month, compared to a daily average of 6,125 in the first eight months of the year. So far in 2023, it has detained 1.47 million migrants and deported 788,089 of them.
Francisco Garduño Yáñez, commissioner of the INM, blamed the US government for the migrant crisis on its border.
“We are not the problem, the problem is the United States (…) there are appointments at the embassy and the United States Consulate in two years, it is a bureaucracy worse than an elephant,” he said on Friday in Ciudad Juárez.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador plans to meet with his American counterpart on November 3 as part of the Partnership of the Americas for Economic Prosperity initiative to address the migration crisis.
With EFE and AP
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