{"id":201760,"date":"2016-10-26T21:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T03:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=201760"},"modified":"2017-01-10T06:48:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T13:48:40","slug":"mexico-fights-illegal-immigration-on-its-own-southern-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/10\/mexico-fights-illegal-immigration-on-its-own-southern-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico fights illegal immigration on its own southern border"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_201764\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-201764\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_18_TT.jpg\" alt=\"Erick Alexander Reyes\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_18_TT.jpg 1500w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_18_TT-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_18_TT-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_18_TT-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_18_TT-1170x780.jpg 1170w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Martin do Nascimento \/ The Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Erick Alexander Reyes, 36, an undocumented migrant traveling from Berlin, El Salvador, arrives on the Mexican shore of the Suchiate River after walking across from Tecun Uman, Guatemala.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>CIUDAD HIDALGO, Chiapas \u2014 The United States isn\u2019t the only country \u2014 nor Texas the only state \u2014 with a long history of illegal immigration over a porous southern border.<\/p>\n<p>Where the Mexican state of Chiapas touches Guatemala, undocumented immigrants and smugglers don\u2019t have to worry about a border patrol, customs agency or immigration authorities of any kind.<\/p>\n<p>They can hire a \u201cbalsero\u201d \u2014 a rafter \u2014 to ferry them across the Suchiate River at one of dozens of informal crossing points. Or just walk across, particularly in times of drought. They do it in plain view of international authorities manning both sides of an official border crossing at Ciudad Hidalgo, a gritty little border town that sits across the river from another gritty little border town, Tecun Uman, Guatemala. On this stretch of the Suchiate, the trickle of legitimate border crossings and the 24\/7 illicit trade co-exist in a state of mutual noninterference.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article originally appeared in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2016\/10\/24\/mexicos-porous-southern-border\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Texas Tribune<\/a>,\u00a0a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. It\u2019s part of the news organization\u2019s \u201cBorder on Insecurity\u201d series.\u00a0The Texas Tribune is taking a yearlong look at the issues of border security and immigration, reporting on the reality and rhetoric around these topics. <a href=\"http:\/\/apps.texastribune.org\/bordering-on-insecurity\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up to get<\/a> story alerts.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Much of the unauthorized traffic is illegally traded goods \u2014 eggs, soda, toilet paper, you name it \u2014 crossing from Mexico into Guatemala, where trucks park along the riverbank awaiting their uninspected cargo. Migrants crossing the river on northward treks to the United States merely blend in with the day laborers and tourists pouring into Mexico. Given the vibrant-but-illicit trade and its considerable economic impact in these otherwise impoverished border towns, there\u2019s no will to shut down the informal crossings, said Sergio Seis Cabrera, head of migrant affairs at city hall in Ciudad Hidalgo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor that reason, they leave it open,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the migrants take advantage of that to cross the river.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The culture of impunity at Mexico\u2019s southern border underscores the challenge of stanching the flow of Central American migrants, whose exodus from their homelands en route to the United States recently registered in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewhispanic.org\/2015\/11\/19\/chapter-1-migration-flows-between-the-u-s-and-mexico-have-slowed-and-turned-toward-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\">noteworthy<\/a> shift in Border Patrol apprehensions: In 2014, for the first time since authorities started tracking it, more non-Mexicans than Mexicans were taken into custody at U.S. borders.<\/p>\n<p>The largest group by far: immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador \u2014 the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America \u2014 where murder rates have skyrocketed amid clashes between warring street gangs. During the last three federal fiscal years, from October 2013 through September of this year, more than half a million immigrants from those three countries were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol \u2014 a whopping 88 percent of them in Texas, figures obtained from the agency show.<\/p>\n<p>As unaccompanied children and sometimes entire families began turning themselves into the U.S. Border Patrol in South Texas by the thousands, policymakers in Austin and Washington, D.C. declared a refugee \u201ccrisis,\u201d and the U.S. exerted pressure on Mexico to stem the flow by cracking down on its own southern border. Thus began the Comprehensive Plan for the Southern Border, or Plan Frontera Sur as the Mexicans call it, along with vows to push back the immigrants \u2014 many fleeing murderous street gangs \u2014 passing through Mexico to reach the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Two years later, it\u2019s clear the balseros on the Suchiate River, and the immigrants who use their services, didn\u2019t get the memo.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_201767\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-201767\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_03_jpg_800x1000_q100-771x514.jpg\" alt=\"Suchiate River\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_03_jpg_800x1000_q100-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_03_jpg_800x1000_q100-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_03_jpg_800x1000_q100-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/MHN_TT_MX_03_jpg_800x1000_q100.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Martin do Nascimento \/ The Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rafts made of inflatable tires and wooden slats ferry people and goods across the Suchiate River separating Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, and Tecun Uman, Guatemala, with the international bridge connecting the two countries in the background.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cKids. Teenagers. Senior citizens. I\u2019ve seen them come through here,\u201d said Marvin Danilo, a 19-year-old balsero who ferries people and cargo on a raft made of pallets and inner tubes for $1.50 a pop. \u201cA lot of people bring their children. Five-year-olds, three-year olds \u2014 even babies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mexican authorities have demonstrably beefed up their presence beyond the border at numerous stationary and mobile checkpoints, and with increased raids and patrols along the routes migrants take northward. And they\u2019ve all but shut down migrants\u2019 use of the trains, popularly known as \u201cLa Bestia,\u201d or \u201cThe Beast,\u201d which once ferried multitudes of undocumented stowaways traveling from southern Mexico to the U.S. border.<\/p>\n<p>But immigrants and experts alike say the Plan Frontera Sur program has been ineffective at best. Though apprehensions and deportations of Central Americans inside Mexico skyrocketed last year, people keep trying, and the number making it to the United States is again on the rise in 2016, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2016\/05\/31\/480073262\/u-s-mexico-border-sees-resurgence-of-central-americans-seeking-asylum\" target=\"_blank\">figures show<\/a>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Rice University\u2019s Baker Institute for Public Policy, in a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.rice.edu\/2016\/08\/11\/baker-institute-paper-mexicos-efforts-to-secure-southern-border-falling-short-2\/\" target=\"_blank\">recent paper<\/a> entitled \u201cMexico\u2019s Not-So-Comprehensive Southern Border Plan,\u201d reported that Mexico shifted funding away from the program and has notably failed to follow through on its promise to create nearly 200 economic development projects in its southern border region.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike similar policy initiatives previously implemented in Mexico, the [southern border plan] is fading into oblivion, but not without leaving negative consequences for Mexico\u2019s migration policy,\u201d the report concluded.<\/p>\n<p>What the Plan Frontera Sur has done is enrich the smugglers, who use bribes to move their clients north through Mexico. That makes the journey far more arduous and dangerous for those who can\u2019t afford a smuggler guide, said Adam Isaacson, a regional security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey have figured out ways to get around this,\u201d said Isaacson. \u201cIt\u2019s largely a failure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hiring a coyote, local slang for smuggler, is the safest and surest way to get from Central America to the United States. But these days that can cost $9,000 to $10,000 a head, up from $6,000 to $8,000 before Plan Frontera Sur was implemented, according to WOLA\u2019s late 2015 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wola.org\/analysis\/new-report-increased-enforcement-at-mexicos-southern-border\/\" target=\"_blank\">progress report<\/a> on the Mexican crackdown.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the price hike, the director of the popular Amigos en el Camino migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Alberto Donis, said about two-thirds of the Central American migrants going to el norte are paying smugglers thousands of dollars to guide them.<\/p>\n<p>Erick Alexander Reyes, a Salvadoran immigrant with a ninth-grade education, isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n<p>Standing on the Mexican side of the riverbank after walking from the Guatemalan side to Ciudad Hidalgo in late April, Reyes said he\u2019s never been able to save enough to pay a coyote. But he\u2019s found ways to adapt.<\/p>\n<p>Reyes, 36, usually takes the first collective taxi out of Ciudad Hidalgo, in the wee morning hours when he says raids and inspections are uncommon. Then he gets off before the immigration checkpoints and walks around them. If he does get in a jam with the authorities, there is usually one sure way to get out of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith money,\u201d he said matter-of-factly. \u201cThey\u2019re corrupt &#8230; if you pay them money, you can do anything you want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a familiar complaint along the migrant routes going northwest from the Guatemalan border along Mexico\u2019s Pacific coast. Now that \u201cLa Bestia\u201d train is basically off limits, the immigrants traveling without smugglers typically wander from one migrant shelter to the next, slowly making their way toward the U.S. border and doing their best to evade checkpoints.<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, they often get robbed, shaken down by the police or assaulted by roving bandits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe most salient critique about the [southern border plan] is that the program has made the journey through Mexico more perilous for migrants because it has forced them to seek alternative routes, many of which are more dangerous to traverse,\u201d the Baker Institute report said.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_201768\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-201768\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GF0A4149-771x514.jpg\" alt=\"Alvin Jimenez\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GF0A4149-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GF0A4149-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GF0A4149-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GF0A4149-1170x780.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GF0A4149.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Martin do Nascimento \/ The Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alvin Jimenez, an immigrant from El Salvador, said he gave Mexican federal police all the cash he had to avoid being sent back home.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Alvin Jimenez, 28, another immigrant from violence-wracked El Salvador, discovered these new perils the hard way this spring. After traveling without incident almost 200 miles from the informal Suchiate River crossing at Ciudad Hidalgo toward a shelter in Arriaga, federal police caught him and several of his companions. He said he paid them 800 pesos in bribes, about $40, to let him go. It was everything he had.<\/p>\n<p>They were able to work for three days in the banana fields to make some of their money back. But then on the way to their next shelter, in Chahuites, the migrants in his group were trying to navigate around an immigration checkpoint at night when bandits appeared out of nowhere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey jumped out of the trees with guns. They made us take off all our clothes, and they checked everything we had,\u201d Jimenez told the Tribune in an April interview. \u201cI had 400 pesos ($20) from the three days of work. Another friend had 200 pesos ($10). They took it all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He finally ended up at the shelter in Ixtepec. As of April, he was determined as ever to migrate to the United States \u2014 either to Houston or Los Angeles, where he has friends and family. He said staying home, where gang members have already tried to kill him, isn\u2019t an option.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince the launch of the Plan Frontera Sur everyone who arrives here has been assaulted. Everyone. Just ask anyone here, and they\u2019ll tell you they\u2019ve been assaulted,\u201d said Donis, the Ixtepec shelter director. \u201cAt the end of the day, these people are going to keep coming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Congress and the White House have publicly blessed Plan Frontera Sur as a way to turn around migrants before they can reach the United States. But of the $130 million the State Department has slated for border security in Mexico, only $20 million had been spent on the program as of February of this year, according to a spring report from the Congressional Research Service.<\/p>\n<p>Citing the recent rise in apprehensions of Central Americans at the U.S. border, the report highlights, in dry bureaucratese, the difficulty of stopping migrants from passing through Mexico as long as they continue to confront abject poverty and violence at home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExperts warn,\u201d the report intones, \u201cthat significant migration flows will continue until policymakers in the countries of origin and the international community address the poor socioeconomic and security conditions driving Central Americans to leave their homes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Reporters Juli\u00e1n Aguilar and Alexa Ura contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under pressure from the United States, Mexico has tried to cut down the flow of Central American immigrants passing through on their way to the southern U.S. border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,3331,236],"class_list":["post-201760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-bordering-on-insecurity","tag-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}