Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian, Sep 6, 2017; last modified on Jul 5, 2018
Young Mexicans speak out about what they lost by leaving the US before Daca, what they gained, and what faces those who may now lose their protection
Three years after she went back to Mexico, a country she barely knew, Maggie Loredo learned that Barack Obama had created temporary deportation relief for undocumented migrants brought to the US as children.
“I immediately wanted to go to the border with all of my things and go back to the US,” she said.
But because she had left, she did not qualify for relief from the threat of deportation under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), the temporary program that the Trump administration now says it will end.
On Tuesday, attorney general Jeff Sessions said the program was introduced unlawfully and the US could not admit everyone who wanted to enter. The US, Sessions said, was enforcing law that “saves lives, protects communities and taxpayers, and prevents human suffering”.
The government was acting with compassion, he said.
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The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Report: Mexico’s Southern Border – Security, Central American Migration, and U.S. Policy
KEY FINDINGS
It has been nearly three years since the Mexican government announced its Southern Border Program, which dramatically increased security operations and apprehensions of northbound migrants. This report—based on field research in the area surrounding Tenosique, Tabasco along Mexico’s border with Guatemala—examines migration flows, enforcement, and insecurity in southern Mexico.
THERE HAS BEEN A SHARP INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF MIGRANTS AND ASYLUM SEEKERS WHO INTEND TO STAY IN MEXICO, RATHER THAN TRAVEL TO THE UNITED STATES.
Many are seeking asylum or other forms of immigration status. Between 2014 and 2016, there was a 311 percent increase in asylum requests in Mexico. In the first three months of 2017, Mexico had received more asylum applications than all of 2015. The UN Refugee Agency estimates that Mexico will receive up to 20,000 asylum requests in 2017.
DECREASED MIGRATION FLOWS THROUGH MEXICO AND AT THE U.S. SOUTHWEST BORDER DURING THE MONTHS FOLLOWING PRESIDENT TRUMP’S INAUGURATION ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE.
News of the Trump administration’s hard line appears to have caused a wave of Central American migration before January 20, and a sharp drop afterward. However, until there are improvements in the violence and adverse conditions from which Central Americans are fleeing, people will continue to migrate in large numbers. By May 2017, apprehension levels at the U.S-Mexico border had begun to tiptoe back up, with a 31 percent increase in total apprehensions compared to April, and a 50 percent increase in apprehensions of unaccompanied minors.
ALTHOUGH MEXICO REGISTERED LOWER APPREHENSION LEVELS IN THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS OF 2017 COMPARED TO PREVIOUS YEARS, MIGRATION ENFORCEMENT UNDER MEXICO’S SOUTHERN BORDER PROGRAM REMAINS HIGH.
Total migrant apprehensions increased by a staggering 85 percent during the Southern Border Program’s first two years of operation (July 2014 to June 2016) compared to pre-Program levels. Limited government resources, migrants’ and smugglers’ ability to adjust to new security patterns, corruption among authorities, and an overall drop in migration from Central America since President Trump took office have all likely contributed to the leveling off of apprehensions seen in Mexico in recent months.
CRIMES AND ABUSES AGAINST MIGRANTS TRAVELING THROUGH MEXICO CONTINUE TO OCCUR AT ALARMING RATES, AND SHELTERS HAVE NOTED A MORE INTENSE DEGREE OF VIOLENCE IN THE CASES THEY DOCUMENT.
While Mexico’s major organized criminal groups do not operate heavily in the Tenosique corridor, smaller criminal bands and Central American gang affiliates routinely rob, kidnap, and sexually assault migrants along this portion of the migration route. Migrant rights organizations in southern Mexico documented an increase in cases of migration and police authorities’ abuse of migrants as a result of the Southern Border Program, including recent accounts of migration agents, who are supposed to be unarmed, using pellet guns and electrical shock devices.
THERE HAVE BEEN FEWER U.S. ASSISTANCE DELIVERIES TO MEXICO FOR THE SOUTHERN BORDER PROGRAM THAN ORIGINALLY EXPECTED, BUT BIOMETRIC AND COMMUNICATIONS PROGRAMS CONTINUE APACE.
The U.S. State and Defense Departments are currently implementing a US$88 million dollar program to increase Mexican immigration authorities’ capacity to collect biometric data and share information about who is crossing through Mexico with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. State and Defense Departments are also funding a US$75 million project to improve secure communications between Mexican agencies in the country’s southern border zone. This program has erected 12 communications towers so far, all of them on Mexican naval posts.
THE MIGRATION ROUTE INTO MEXICO THROUGH TENOSIQUE, TABASCO HAS SEEN A SHARP INCREASE IN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE REGION.
Between 2014 and 2016, the number of children (both accompanied and unaccompanied) apprehended in the state of Tabasco increased by 60 percent. The majority of migrants traveling through this area of the border are from Honduras.
No One Talks About Life After Deportation; These Mexican Activists Are Changing That
A network of migrant activists is helping deportees and returnees readjust to life in the country.
Laura Weiss, The Nation, April 28, 2017
https://www.thenation.com/article/no-one-talks-about-life-after-deportation-these-mexican-activists-are-changing-that/
On the night of November 8, 2016, 26-year-old Maggie Loredo, like millions of others, was messaging her friends with growing anxiety. “Watching the election… It just all fell apart,” she recalled two months after Donald Trump’s victory. But Loredo was watching the election results not from the United States, a country where she lived for most of her life, but from her hometown of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where she had returned eight years before.
Loredo came to the United States as a toddler with her family and decided to move back to Mexico after graduating high school. Barred from receiving financial aid from public universities in her home state of Georgia and with no way to legally work in the United States, Loredo thought it would be easier to attend college in the country where she was born. But in San Luis Potosí, she found that the officials at the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Secretary of Public Education) were incompetent and unable to give her the appropriate guidance to validate her high-school diploma.
In the meantime, she says she became the victim of labor abuse in a job at an English school that exploited and stole from her. “There was no way I would get another job, because I didn’t have a college diploma or experience or a lot of recommendation letters,” she explains. She says it almost felt like being undocumented again, despite being a Mexican citizen. It would take five years of navigating the government bureaucracy before she would be able to start college.
Laura Weiss, The Nation, April 28, 2017
https://www.thenation.com/article/no-one-talks-about-life-after-deportation-these-mexican-activists-are-changing-that/
On the night of November 8, 2016, 26-year-old Maggie Loredo, like millions of others, was messaging her friends with growing anxiety. “Watching the election… It just all fell apart,” she recalled two months after Donald Trump’s victory. But Loredo was watching the election results not from the United States, a country where she lived for most of her life, but from her hometown of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, where she had returned eight years before.
Loredo came to the United States as a toddler with her family and decided to move back to Mexico after graduating high school. Barred from receiving financial aid from public universities in her home state of Georgia and with no way to legally work in the United States, Loredo thought it would be easier to attend college in the country where she was born. But in San Luis Potosí, she found that the officials at the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Secretary of Public Education) were incompetent and unable to give her the appropriate guidance to validate her high-school diploma.
In the meantime, she says she became the victim of labor abuse in a job at an English school that exploited and stole from her. “There was no way I would get another job, because I didn’t have a college diploma or experience or a lot of recommendation letters,” she explains. She says it almost felt like being undocumented again, despite being a Mexican citizen. It would take five years of navigating the government bureaucracy before she would be able to start college.
La 72 Hogar Refugio para Personas Migrantes. Informe 2016
En los límites de la frontera, quebrando los límites: situación de los derechos humanos de las personas migrantes y refugiadas de Tenosique, Tabasco.
La 72 Hogar Refugio para Personas Migrantes. Informe 2016. Publicado por El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 26 de abril de 2017
“No podemos negar la crisis humanitaria que en los últimos años ha significado la migración de miles de personas, ya sea por tren, por carretera e incluso a pie, atravesando cientos de kilómetros por montañas, desiertos, caminos inhóspitos. Esta tragedia humana que representa la migración forzada hoy en día es un fenómeno global. Esta crisis, que se puede medir en cifras, nosotros queremos medirla por nombres, por historias, por familias. Son hermanos y hermanas que salen expulsados por la pobreza y la violencia, por el narcotráfico y el crimen organizado. Frente a tantos vacíos legales, se tiende una red que atrapa y destruye siempre a los más pobres. No sólo sufren la pobreza sino que además tienen que sufrir todas estas formas de violencia. Injusticia que se radicaliza en los jóvenes, ellos, «carne de cañón», son perseguidos y amenazados cuando tratan de salir de la espiral de violencia y del infierno de las drogas. ¡Y qué decir de tantas mujeres a quienes les han arrebatado injustamente la vida!” (Homilía del Papa Francisco el 17 de febrero de 2016 en Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua)
Tal parece que la tragedia es permanente; tal parece que nos hemos acostumbrado a escuchar el clamor, los gritos tumultuosos de aquellas y aquellos que van a la intemperie cargando su único patrimonio que han conseguido en su corta o larga, pero nunca dolorosa existencia: el sueño de una vida mejor. Y desafortunadamente, aquellas, aquellos que salen ahora de sus países para, literalmente, sobrevivir encuentran ya desde el inicio del camino en México, persecución, humillación, ultrajes sexuales, extorsión, muerte.
A continuación presentamos nuestro primer informe público.
In Mexico, momentum grows to put out welcome mat for 'Dreamers' search for solutions
David Laconangelo, The Christan Science Monitor, February 24, 2017
Mexico estimates that some 40,000 young people who lived undocumented in the US may move back in the next several years. Many face enormous obstacles in trying to transfer educational credits that are crucial to establishing a foothold in Mexico.
Before Maggie Loredo left her home in Georgia’s Dalton County for her grandfather’s house in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, she called the office of the Mexican public education secretariat.
If I want to apply to a public university, she asked, but I grew up in the United States, which documents am I going to need?
Nothing but your transcripts and diploma, the attendant told her.
Mexico estimates that some 40,000 young people who lived undocumented in the US may move back in the next several years. Many face enormous obstacles in trying to transfer educational credits that are crucial to establishing a foothold in Mexico.
Before Maggie Loredo left her home in Georgia’s Dalton County for her grandfather’s house in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, she called the office of the Mexican public education secretariat.
If I want to apply to a public university, she asked, but I grew up in the United States, which documents am I going to need?
Nothing but your transcripts and diploma, the attendant told her.
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