Flow of Central American Children Headed to U.S. Shifts but Doesn’t Slow

NY Times: The recent images of tens of thousands of desperate asylum seekers streaming into Europe recall a smaller but significant migration crisis unfolding along the southern border of the United States: Waves of Central American migrants — many of them children — were detained at the border last year.

A disturbing number of unaccompanied children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have tried to reach the United States in the past two years, risking detention by law enforcement, abuse by human traffickers and dire conditions along the way.

Immigration to U.S. from Mexico drops sharply

Vallarta Daily: Even as immigration remains a hot topic in the U.S. presidential campaign, the number of people emigrating from Mexico to the United States, legally and illegally, has dropped sharply in recent years, research published Wednesday shows.

Demographers at the University of Texas San Antonio and the University of New Hampshire say the number of immigrants coming from Mexico peaked in 2003, and has fallen by more than half since then. Read more. 

Understanding Mexico's passport requirement

San Diego Union Tribune: Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California worked Tuesday to assuage fears of long southbound pedestrian lines into the country as his agency prepares to step up enforcement of a requirement that U.S. visitors carry a passport when entering Mexico.

“We are going to do everything possible to ensure that there are no obstacles,” Rodulfo Figueroa said during a news conference at the offices of the Tijuana Tourism and Conventions Committee. "We're going to start applying the law gradually. We know there is going to be a learning period, we won't be inflexible in applying the law, but certainly we'll try to educate the public." Read more. 

Mexico authorities stage midnight migrant raid

AP:  The lumbering freight train known as "The Beast," a key part of the route for migrants heading north to the United States, rolled to an abrupt, unscheduled stop in the black of midnight.

Mexican federal police and immigration agents had waited silently in the brush alongside for at least hour, visible only by the glint of their powerful flashlights. Read more. 

Mexico officials pull CentAm migrants from trains

AP: U.S.-bound Central Americans are fleeing urban areas and hiking into the woods and low jungle for fear of being detained by Mexican officials rounding up migrants in southern Mexico.

Until recently, the streets of Arriaga bustled with migrants who would stay at cheap flophouses and shelters and hop aboard the northbound freight trains at will. The streets of the city of about 40,000 people now look empty.  Read more. 

Mexico is Doing 'Nothing' as Migration Issue Spirals (Excelsior, Mexico)

WorldsMeets (Excelsior): In recent weeks there has been renewed attention paid to a phenomenon that for years has been a scourge for Latin American peoples, and for decades the people of the United States have felt its ramifications: the migration of thousands of people toward North America.

The issue began to be mentioned with greater frequency after the alarming rise in the number of unaccompanied children venturing across the Mexico-U.S. border caught the attention of U.S. President Barack Obama. They are detained, with some placed in migration centers, and others deported to their countries of origin. Read more. 

At Vatican, Obama's Immigration Hypocrisy Shines Through (La Jornada, Mexico)

La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)

Translated By Acosta-Florizul Perez for WorldMeetUs

April 1, 2014

In the meeting last week at the Vatican between U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis, the two heads of state addressed the issue of our northern neighbor's immigration policy, issuing a call to "eradicate the trafficking of human beings around the world," to work so that "international and humanitarian law is respected within conflict zones," and to seek "negotiated solutions."

Bearing in mind the upsurge in persecutions of undocumented immigrants and the consequent violations of human rights during Obama’s terms in office, such declarations constitute an act of hypocrisy on his part. It must be remembered that the current U.S. president has not only shown a reluctance to abandon his country's traditional policies of persecution and violations of human rights regarding immigration, but he has continuously intensified them. Proof of this is the fact that his government has deported more than two million undocumented immigrants, nearly 140,000 this year alone, the highest figure on record, behind which are so many untold stories of personal and family suffering.  Read more.

Anarchy along Mexico's southern border crossings

LA Times 
By Richard Fausset
August 3, 2013

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — The Mexican government is pledging to bring order to its wild southern border. The stakes couldn't be higher, and the job couldn't be more difficult.

The proof lies in this dusty border town of 14,000 people. Here, unmonitored goods and travelers float across the wide Suchiate River — the boundary between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas — on a flotilla of inner-tube rafts. They cross all day long, in plain sight of Mexican authorities stationed a few yards upriver at an official border crossing.

Some of the Central Americans are visiting just for the day. Others are hoping to find work on Mexican coffee plantations or banana farms. But many will continue north toward the United States.  Read more. 

In Mexico, rails are risky crossing for a new wave of Central American migrants

Washington Post 
By Nick Miroff
July 15, 2013

Central Americans have been catching freight trains to the U.S. border for years, risking injury or worse for a free ride and a path clear of Mexican government checkpoints. But at a time when illegal immigration to the United States remains near its lowest point in four decades, the number of Central Americans going north has soared, putting new attention on the rail system that takes thousands to the border each year.  Read more.

Mexico objects to border security portion of US immigration bill, says fences not solution

The Washington Post 
By Associated Press
June 25, 2013

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government objected on Tuesday to an immigration bill that appears headed for approval in the U.S. Senate, saying the initiative’s heavy focus on border security is not consistent with the relationship between the two countries.

Foreign Relations Secretary Jose Meade said that instead of expanding a border fence, as proposed in the bill, the United States should modernize border bridges to expedite commerce.

“Fences do not unite,” Meade said while reading a statement to reporters during a news conference where he didn’t take questions.  Read more. 

Mexico detains 108 in immigration sweep; most from Central America

Reuters
Apr 27, 2013
Mexico City

Mexican authorities said on Saturday they detained 108 undocumented immigrants along highways, at bus stations and on a cargo train route that thousands of Central Americans use every year to cross Mexico and enter the United States illegally.

Ninety five Central Americans, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, were detained in the southern states of Oaxaca and Tabasco during sweeps by federal police in the last 24 hours, Mexico's migration institute said in a statement.

Seven of the Central Americans were children, the institute said.

An increasing number of Central Americans are sneaking across Mexico's largely unpoliced southern border en route to the United States. Migrants have been spurred on by rampant poverty and rising drug gang violence in their home countries.  Read more. 

In Trek North, First Lure Is Mexico’s Other Line

The NY Times
By Randal C Archibold
April 26, 2013

In Washington, the biggest immigration overhaul in decades would tighten border security between Mexico and the United States to stem the flow of illegal crossings.

But there is another border making the task all the more challenging: Mexico’s porous boundary with Central America, where an increasing number of migrants heading to the United States cross freely into Mexico under the gaze of the Mexican authorities. So many Central Americans are fleeing the violence, crime and economic stagnation of their homes that American officials have encountered a tremendous spike in migrants making their way through Mexico to the United States. Read more.