Another Day, Another Caravan

Migrants at the Mexico Border in Tijuana. Image Capture by TNB.

Tighter security measures have failed to prevent another Central American caravan of almost 1,000 people from entering Mexico through its southern border, reports Mexico News Daily. Roughly 600 of them were quickly found and detained by a joint military and police operation and sent to an overcrowded detention center.

The newspaper provides examples of their crackdown:

In Chiapas, the Mexican state bordering Guatemala, the National Immigration Institute (a division of the Mexican government) installed at least 10 new checkpoints on main stretch of highway used by migrants travelling between the cities of Tapachula and Pijijiapan.

Both military and police have dramatically increased raids in Tapachula, focusing on cheap hotels and guesthouses. 100 Hondurans and 68 Cubans have been found and repatriated this month.

Federal Police are keeping migrants from sneaking onto northbound freight trains in Veracruz, attempting to reduce usage of one of the common methods of migrant travel.

The main detention center used for incoming immigrants is the Siglo XXI center in Tapachula, located near the border with Guatemala. This site has been the source of repeated uprisings and riots over the course of many months, as Mexico attempts to stem the flow of immigrants through their country.

The massive strain on the current immigration controls in Mexico has been the primary drive behind their current policy, which is to attempt to mitigate the crises in the Central American nations so they do not have refugees flowing across their border.

The Mexican government has long been hailed by critics of U.S. immigration policy weakness for its handling of immigrants. Their strict rules against transit into the country have been cited as reflecting what we should do about our Southern border. The large quantities of people flooding northward, however, is a relatively new development following years of ever-increasing hardship and violence in Central American nations, and the Mexican policies have been demonstrated to be unable to stem the tide without resorting to draconian and potentially deadly measures.

This is all completely independent of any Mexican nationals who may choose to leave their country to come to America… and Mexicans coming into America improperly still comprise more than 50% of all illegal immigrants.

Any serious efforts to stem illegal immigration would be championing the Mexican efforts on Central American movement, addressing the fact that people from places like Cuba were joining in the caravans, and then shifting attention away from the caravans to policy that matters – speeding up the process by which Mexicans can legally apply for worker status and have their backgrounds checked, addressing the visa overstays, addressing air and seaport abuses. Instead the U.S. administration is focused on the political gains to be had by ratcheting up fears of migrant caravans which, even if their travel through Mexico was facilitated, which it has not been, would make up a fraction of violations.

About the opinions in this article…

Any opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this website or of the other authors/contributors who write for it.

About AlienMotives 1991 Articles
Ex-Navy Reactor Operator turned bookseller. Father of an amazing girl and husband to an amazing wife. Tired of willful political blindness, but never tired of politics. Hopeful for the future.