The city of Tapachula in the Mexican state of Chiapas has become a city of migrants.
Tens of thousands migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, China, and elsewhere are stranded there. Few options for employment exist in Tapachula for migrants if they do not have the legal papers to work in Mexico, and immigration authorities often block them from continuing north.
Mexico’s strict immigration policies stem from pressure by the United States to curb entry through the U.S.-Mexico border. They make migration far more dangerous and, in effect, extend the southern border of the United States all the way to Mexico’s border with Guatemala.
“There is an agreement between the governments to continue containing people on the southern border [of Mexico],” Lizbeth Guerrero, director of the Organization for the Support of Venezuelan Migrants in Mexico, tells The Progressive.
Mexico’s strict immigration policies stem from pressure by the United States to curb entry through the U.S.-Mexico border.
“[Migrants] are on the streets,” she explains. “Those who are alleviating the crisis are those in civil society, because the government is not really doing anything.”
Among the groups assisting migrants in Tapachula is the Fray Matías Human Rights Center, which has offered services for decades. But the numbers of migrants in the city have steadily increased over the last four years.
“Unfortunately, this increase has not been accompanied by new avenues for immigration regularization.,” Yuriria Salvador, who works with the center, tells The Progressive. “On the contrary, immigration controls have tightened and the migrant assistance policy has been militarized.”
This increase is part of a regional trend, with Central America seeing an estimated 462,014 migrants crossing through Honduras between January and November 2023, according to Honduran officials from the National Commission for Human Rights in Honduras, or CONADEH.
While some migrants stay in Chiapas and seek to obtain documents to remain and work, others attempt to cross into the United States. The route through Mexico entails a maze of immigration checkpoints, organized crime, violence, and the ever present threat of deportation. For this reason, many migrants view the possibility of finding refuge in Mexico asis a welcome option, in spite of the long waits.
Amanda Aguilar sat outside of the offices of the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees, or COMAR, in Tapachula, waiting to receive an appointment with representatives from the refugee service, which is part of the process of obtaining refugee status. She was one of many migrants from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere waiting to enter the building to plead their case on December 13, 2023.
“The process has been somewhat slow,” the twenty-eight-year-old mother of three tells The Progressive. “But [those in COMAR] have taken good care of us.”
She was forced to flee her home town of Mazatenango, Guatemala, with her children in July 2023 after gangs destroyed her small store because she couldn’t pay the extortion fee of 20,000 Quetzales each month, or a little more than $2,500.
Jeff Abbott
Downtown Tapachula, Mexico, has become an extensive waiting room for migrants hoping to head north
Mexico has seen a rapid increase in applications for asylum in recent years.
In 2022, the country received almost 120,000 applications for refugee status. Eleven years earlier in 2011, the country was only receiving about 800 applications for asylum per year.
“I heard people talking about Mexico,” Aguilar says. “So I took the adventure here.”
But the process is a long one, and many migrants have grown frustrated with it. Organizations like Fray Matías Human Rights Center work to help migrants obtain housing while they are going through the refugee status process.
“Refugees are forced to wait in the city where they began their procedure,” Salvador says. “Here in Tapachula, there are very few opportunities, [and no] decent housing, employment”
Refugees are not legally allowed to work while they are in the process of applying for asylum. Both Aguilar and another migrant from Guatemala, said that they had been living off of money they had saved prior to migrating to Mexico.
But growing migrant desperation has led to the formation of numerous caravans seeking to walk north together in order to find protection from both immigration authorities and organized crime.
The U.S. and Mexican governments’ efforts to contain migrants in the southern Mexican city have overwhelmed refugee services in the region.
On October 23, nearly 5,000 migrants, fed up with the long waits for a visa to exit the southern state or to get refugee status, set out walking from Tapachula. Another caravan is set to form on December 24, 2023.
The U.S. and Mexican governments’ efforts to contain migrants in the southern Mexican city have overwhelmed refugee services in the region, resulting in longer waits for those seeking to obtain legal permission to remain in Mexico.
But improving conditions for asylum seekers and migrants has proven to be challenging.
“Unfortunately, it has also been almost impossible to dialogue with the immigration authorities to be able to generate substantive proposals,” Salvador says. “Not even a temporary immigration regularization program.”