Kate Linthicum,
Los Angeles Times, Dec 01, 2016
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Tenosique, Mexico
Growing numbers of Central American immigrants have decided to stay in Mexico, because it's too hard to reach the U.S. The burden on Mexico is likely to grow under a Trump presidency, officials fear.
Unable to find work and terrified by the street gangs that brazenly roamed the streets, Karen Zaldivar was one of tens of thousands of young people who fled Honduras in 2014.
Caught trying to slip across the U.S.-Mexico border, she was promptly deported.
Last year, Zaldivar set out again, but with a new destination: Mexico. She now lives in a small city just north of the Guatemalan border along with growing numbers of other Central Americans who have concluded that if they can't reach the United States, the next best thing is Mexico.
"I decided to make a life here," she said at a small open-air restaurant in Tenosique, where she works in the kitchen, frying fish. "It's calmer, and safer."
Estimates of how many Central Americans are living in Mexico are hard to come by, in part because some, like Zaldivar, have obtained forged Mexican identity documents. But statistics show more and more are staying legally by seeking political asylum or humanitarian visas.
Asylum applications in Mexico nearly tripled over three years, hitting 3,424 in 2015. Asylum requests this year are poised to be twice that, human rights advocates say, with most filed by Hondurans and Salvadorans.
I decided to make a life here. It's calmer, and safer. Karen Zaldivar, Honduran immigrant in Mexico
