AMERICA/MEXICO - Is solidarity with migrants over in Mexico?

Chiapas (Agenzia Fides) - There are many testimonies of Central American migrants crossing the south of Mexico towards the United States, who report what happened last Tuesday, April 23, when they managed to escape the police, passing under barbed wire fences and headed towards the countryside to spend the night there, after more than 400 people had been arrested in a raid never seen before in the south of Mexico.
One of the few groups that managed to escape was the one that had hidden in the church of Tonalá, in Chiapas. The police operation practically dispersed the caravan of about 3 thousand migrants, mostly from Honduras. Many of them fled to the hills, others fled to churches or took freight trains. Few ventured on the streets. "They hunted us" was the phrase that many of them reported looking for something to eat in small towns in southern Mexico.
When the news reached the national press, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador did not offer details on the operation, but acknowledged that the government does not allow migrants to simply go "where they want". He denied adopting a strict policy and stated that the control of migrants is for their safety, because there are traffickers of people infiltrated among them. "We do not want them to have free passage - said López Obrador -, not only for legal reasons, but for security reasons".
The director of the National Institute of Migration (INM), Tonatiuh Guillén, declared that it was a normal operation and that Mexico has expelled 11,800 migrants so far this month. Now the country is more selective in granting humanitarian visas, which allow migrants to stay and work in the country. Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero reported that migrants arrested this week refused to register for a regional visa, which would allow them to remain in the south of the country.
According to the international press, US President Donad Trump has increased public pressure on Mexico to do more to cut the flow of Central Americans crossing the territory. López Obrador reiterated that his government has not changed position regarding immigration policy: if Mexico has expelled thousands of migrants in recent months, it has also issued more than 15,000 humanitarian visas that allow them to stay and work in the country.
Faced with this situation in the south of Mexico, the Catholic Church is increasingly committed to these vulnerable groups. Thus appears in the report by Mgr. Alfonso Miranda Guardiola, Auxiliary Bishop of Monterrey and General Secretary of the Mexican Bishop’s Conference (CEM), in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on April 23 (see Fides, 24/4/2019).
According to information sent to Fides, if at first the population of Chiapas had shown solidarity with the Central American migrant caravans, which was not historically part of their way of life, it is now showing intolerance towards the growth of the migrant population that lives in its streets, looking for food or money. Fr. Heyman Vázquez, did not hesitate to indicate the reasons why solidarity has decreased: "This is due to the intense campaign of discrimination and xenophobia spread through social networks and the media, which blame migrants for insecurity in Chiapas", he explained to local newspapers.
According to the note sent to Fides, the groups of migrants who manage to reach the northern border of Mexico present a new peculiarity: the enormous amount of children who are alone. The number of children under the age of 12 trying to cross the border without parents or guardians is on the rise, with over 8,900 unaccompanied minors arrested in March (in the US), almost double compared to October 2018. (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 25/4/2019)

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