Video: Migrants face violent confrontations during caravan in Chiapas from National Guard and INM

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confrontation between agents of the National Institute of Migration ( INM ) and undocumented persons, was registered this Saturday afternoon between the limits of the municipality of Tapachula and Huehuetán, Chiapas, at the height of the Forensic Medical Service building. 

The situation exploded when agents of the INM began to detain migrants who had been left behind during the march traveling from Honduras to Mexico while uploading them to the INM vehicles and then take them to the immigration detention centers. 

Elements of the National Guard shoot down a migrant with a child in his arms as he passes through Chiapas

However, the situation became complicated when the undocumented who were more advanced, began to return to try to free their compatriots by attacking the agents, in addition to hitting the units, managing to rescue six of their companions.

In the middle of the altercation, National Guard agents did not intervene and only asked the foreigners to calm down. 

This caravan heading towards the center of the country has regrouped, and according to witnesses, the migrants are armed with stones and sticks to avoid being detained by the authorities. 

The Government of Mexico tries to stop caravan of Haitian migrants seeking work in the country

GN, military and INM, implemented violent containment operations. The Mexican government forces asylum-seeking migrants to remain in Chiapas, where they have no sources of employment.

A thousand migrants from Haiti, all with asylum requests pending, started a caravan that left the city of Tapachula, Chiapas this Saturday. Most seek to reach cities in Mexico where they can obtain sources of employment.

The decision to leave the city was made after the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) has not responded to their refugee requests, a process that should be completed in three months, and now takes more than a year.

The migrants say that their objective is not to reach the United States, but to find a city where they can have a means of subsistence. “The important thing is not to cross the border, if we can leave Tapachula, we cannot find a way to work elsewhere.”

“The important thing we need is to leave Chiapas because there is no work in Chiapas. In Chiapas there is no way to live, people are treating us like animals. If we are refugees, what we are looking for is a way of living to be able to eat ”, explained one of the migrants, before starting the caravan.

During the week that passed, the migrants held protests outside the offices of the National Institute of Migration (INM) and COMAR, to ask for the speeding up of their refugee procedures.

According to the regulations of the Mexican government, as long as COMAR does not issue an opinion on the applications, migrants cannot leave the city where they started the process, in this case, the city of Tapachula.

In Tapachula, a city on the border with Guatemala, there are currently more than 5,000 migrants from Haiti, and about 3,000 from Central America and Cuba, awaiting the opinions of COMAR. To survive, some Haitian migrants engage in informal commerce, an activity with which they manage to earn only about 150 pesos a day.

“Give us an opportunity to go out, to circulate and find how we can work to eat, because you have to pay for a house, and there are people who are living in the park, who have girls and boys,” the migrants asked.

Faced with this scenario, at dawn this Saturday, migrants left the city in a caravan; They were joined by migrants from Central America and some Cubans. After advancing about 30 kilometers, at the height of the municipality called Huehuetán, agents of the National Guard (GN), the Mexican army, and the INM placed a fence to prevent progress. In this operation, they intercepted about 300 of them, and through the use of force, they forced them to board buses to take them to the Siglo XXI immigration station.

Other migrants managed to break through and advance to the city of Huixtla, where they spend the night; several were injured during the containment operation.

The Collective for the Observation and Monitoring of Human Rights of the Mexican Southeast (COMDHSM), denounced that there is a delay in the administrative processes to present a refugee request before COMAR, since the available appointments are being granted until January 2022. In addition, In recent weeks, authorities have detained and deported people with documents supporting their regular stay in Mexico.

Regarding the operation of containment of the caravan, they denounced that there was an excessive and unjustified deployment of security forces, with approximately 50 vehicles, including INM vehicles and buses, trucks, and vans of the GN and the army.

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“People were attacked, subjected, beaten with shields and batons; the carrying of long weapons was identified by elements of the army, elements of the INM dressed in civilian clothes inciting the aggression, as well as other unidentified security agents, civilian clothes and carrying firearms ”.

Source: chiapasparalelo.com, eluniversal.com.mx

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