Mexico’s Own Refugee Surge: A Soaring Number Of Latin Americans Are Fleeing Criminal Violence And Political Chaos
By Ioan Grillo
USNews
July 10, 2018
TAPACHULA, Mexico — Yesica Cashpal had been celebrating Father's Day with her husband and two young children in their home in El Salvador when there was an ominous knock at the door from local gang members. Speaking to her husband, the gang members demanded they be able to utilize the house to stash drugs and weapons. When he refused, they became angry and said they would tell their boss and there would be consequences.
Cashpal, 24, knew the gang's threats were not idle; they had killed dozens in the area and three years ago murdered her very neighbor, leaving his body for hours in the sun while people were too scared to call the police. So the same night as the threat, the family abandoned their home and headed north with little more than the clothes they were wearing.
"They kill children, women, older men, youths," Cashpal says, hugging her son and daughter outside a church shelter in this humid city in southern Mexico. "When they killed my neighbor it was traumatic … everybody was looking while there were flies around his body, dogs licking the blood."
While many Salvadorans head to the United States, Cashpal has stayed here in Mexico, where she has begun the process of applying for refugee status. She says the family members had no money to travel further and are concerned about the reports of harsh treatment of refugees by U.S. authorities.
Their application is one of a surging number in Mexico amid criminal violence and political turmoil in several countries across Latin America. In 2017, there were more than 14,000 refugee claims in Mexico, up from 2,000 in 2014, according to the United Nations refugee agency, or UNHCR. This year there will likely be more still, says a Mexican official who handles the requests and spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Donald Trump has complained that Mexico is not doing enough to stop the wave of people heading through its territory toward the Rio Grande. "Mexico does nothing for us," he said during a recent meeting of his Cabinet. "They encourage people, frankly, to walk through Mexico and go into the United States."
By taking on thousands of refugees, however, Mexico is relieving the burden on the overloaded U.S. courts. Mexico also detains large numbers of undocumented Central Americans who are not applying for refugee status here, and deports them back to their home countries. In fiscal year 2017, Mexico deported more than 94,000 Central Americans – even more than the 74,000 deported from the United States in the same time, according to figures from the Migration Policy Institute cited by the newspaper Reforma.
Violence by gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha drives many of the refugees from their homes in Central America's Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But there has also been a wave of political turmoil, with bloody crackdowns on protesters in Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela over the past year. The top source countries of refugees arriving in Mexico are now Honduras, followed by Venezuela and then El Salvador, according to the UNHCR.
Luis Andara, 57, fled his home in Nicaragua and is applying for refugee status in Mexico, saying he has been targeted for his family links to the political-military apparatus, while he himself is not a government supporter. "I got stuck in the middle," he says, standing in a river outside the church shelter and scrubbing himself down with soap. "I was followed and I was beat up badly, I was thrown from a 7-meter bridge. … My hand was separated from the arm, hanging from a little bit of flesh."
Free to Go in Mexico
In the United States, many refugees are kept in detention while their claims are processed, which can take months or even years. In Mexico, refugee claimants are left free, as long as they don't leave the state. "Here they treat you like a migrant, like a human. In the United States, they treat you like a criminal," says Elid Turcio, 38, who first applied for asylum in the United States but was rejected and is now applying in Mexico. He fled Honduras after his brother and parents were murdered by a drug trafficking gang.
U.S. courts deny the majority of asylum claims from Central Americans, rejecting 79 percent of those from El Salvador and 78 percent of those from Honduras between 2012 and 2017, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. In contrast, Mexico approved 64 percent of refugee claims from Salvadorans and 50 percent of those from Hondurans last year, according to the UNHCR.
U.S. courts demand that refugees show they are persecuted by the government or are targeted for being from a vulnerable minority, and generally do not accept those who are fleeing gangsters. This position was hardened by a June 11 ruling by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. "Asylum was never meant to solve all problems – even all serious problems – that people face every day all over the world," Sessions said.
In contrast in Mexico, refugee claims are usually only refused if there is not enough evidence of the threats themselves or if the claimant has a serious criminal record, explains an official from the Mexican Refugee Commission.
Many of the refugees arriving in Mexico sneak into the country from Guatemala, walking over the hills or crossing one of the rivers, before making their application. In the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman, oarsmen charge about $1.30 to cross into Mexico on a raft built with tractor tires, and all day rafts full of people can be seen. Most are local residents who go into Mexico to do their shopping, an informal cross-border commerce that has long been tolerated. Migrants and refugees move among them. They then can travel by bus to the larger city of Tapachula, although Mexican immigration officials run sporadic checkpoints on the road.
The entry of refugees and migrants has swelled Tapachula, with makeshift barrios emerging on the outskirts. The center is bustling with people from across the globe, not only from Latin America but as far afield as Africa. David Eca, 33, came from the Congo, where he says his father had been murdered in political violence. Flying to Ecuador, he traveled by land through South and Central America and aims to reach the United States and apply for asylum there.
Those seeking refuge in Mexico are not given work permits while their applications are processed, and many rely on charity while some beg for money. Others work without papers, toiling in coffee fields or construction sites. One pickup truck arrived by the church shelter to take a group to work for the promise of 150 pesos, or about $8, for the day.
Mexico's Own Violence
Mexico also has its own serious problems of criminal violence, which can be as bad as in the countries people have run from. In 2017, journalist Edwin Rivera fled Honduras after threats but was then murdered in Veracruz, Mexico. Cartels here have also kidnapped large groups of Central Americans to demand ransom money, pressuring them to call family members they have in the United States. In the run-up to the July 1 national elections, more than 100 candidates or party militants were murdered.
"Mexico is not safe for those who flee violence," Doctors Without Borders said in a June 26 statement. "The impossibility of getting asylum in the United States would leave tens of thousands in a situation of extreme vulnerability."
Alongside refugees and migrants looking for work, some criminals also slip into southern Mexico without papers. There are currently more than 100 foreigners in Tapachula's prison out of a total population of about 900. Most are undocumented Central Americans, including members of the rival Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs, says public defense lawyer Luis Del Rosario.
Del Rosario says he labors for a fair treatment for all the defendants, whatever the nationality.
"We can't be indifferent about Central Americans. On the contrary, we have to give them the same respect and attention that we want for ourselves," he says. "It is like if Mexicans go to the United States, we want respect. We have to start here."
Some others in the city, however, are less tolerant. Restaurant owner Angel Brindis says the Mexican government should work harder to stop foreigners entering who come to commit crimes rather than work, and has had to defend himself from robbery and assault on various occasions. "They come outside the business, drugged up or drunk, looking for problems," he says. "They hold up stores with knives and guns, they demand money from people walking by."
The presence of Central American gang members also makes refugees concerned they could run into members of the same mobs they are fleeing. Turcio, who ran from Honduras, says he avoids the center of Tapachula so he is not seen by anyone connected to the drug trafficking gang who murdered his family.
Cashpal, the Salvadoran refugee, says she has received warm treatment in Mexico. When her family arrived at the river, the oarsman took pity on them, providing free transit and money for the bus.
Fear has followed her, but she says her faith gives her the strength to keep going.
"I trust in God that everything will be all right," she says. "But tomorrow, we don't know if we are going to wake up alive or what."
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