The waits in the bureaucratic procedures to regularize and the prohibition to leave the state led migrants to irregularly buy birth certificates and resident cards.
The desperation generated among Cuban immigrants by the long waits in the procedures to regularize in Mexico and the impossibility of leaving Chiapas without first obtaining papers have fueled a black market for birth certificates and resident cards in that state in southern Mexico, which concentrates the largest number of migrants of that nationality.
Óscar [not his real name because he speaks on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals] is Cuban, 30 years old, and has witnessed the sale of illegal Mexican documents to other migrants of the same nationality in Chiapas. “I know several who pay, and at the moment they are given a process, an answer, or they are given their residence, that is, with money it is resolved,” he said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo from the Mexican capital.
He arrived in the Chiapas municipality of Tapachula, on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, at the end of 2024, and waited there for almost a year for his temporary residence process for family reunification to be resolved (he is married to a Mexican) without getting a response. “Almost a year in the process and nothing. So, I decided to move to Mexico City and start the process again,” he added.
During those 11 months, he tried to leave Chiapas twice but was detained and interned at the Siglo XXI Station in Tapachula with other migrants detained at the nine immigration checkpoints in the state, since Mexican laws do not allow them free transit.
“It is more difficult in Chiapas because of the number of migrants there and the delay in the procedures,” he said, “there are many people who are there, they do not see an answer, they get desperate and decide to go up, to advance higher [than Mexico].”
Chiapas concentrates 67% of the total applications for the regularization of Cubans throughout the country, according to data from the National Institute of Migration. From January to November 2025, 1,049 immigration processes were registered in that state out of a total of 1,575 procedures throughout Mexico.
Activist Luis Rey García Villagrán says that although the sale of Mexican documents to migrants had already been detected 6 years ago, the black market grew alarmingly with the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025.
“What any migrant at this time wants since Trump took the presidency is to have legal certainty in Mexico, to be someone in this country, because if they don’t, they are still ghosts, they are in a migratory limbo,” he explained.
Noticias Telemundo contacted the National Institute of Migration and the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the sale of Mexican documents to migrants, but so far has not received a response.
From Tapachula, two other Cuban migrants spoke to Noticias Telemundo, also under anonymity, to whom Mexican lawyers directly offered to buy birth certificates and resident cards in Chiapas.
They said that the people who offered them the documents gave them identification cards with their information as immigration lawyers and that they offered them birth certificates, temporary and permanent resident cards issued by Mexican authorities, for a cost of between 9,000 and 26,000 pesos (the equivalent of 500 and 1,500 dollars).
“They offered it to me; they were talking to me. They were explaining to me, if I was interested in the visa, humanitarian visa, permanent visa, an office lawyer,” said one of them in an interview: “I told him no, but they are valid documents because there are colleagues who have it and are already in Mexico City.”
“It’s a pretty high price,” said another of the migrants interviewed, “the advantage with permanent residency is that you already have more rights, you can now work formally, you can already have insurance, you know what I mean? And you can move freely in Mexico.”
In early January, the Chiapas Prosecutor’s Office arrested three Mexican civil registry officials for printing official birth certificates for migrants. “In the civil registry, they were issuing birth certificates to foreigners, that is, illegally in collusion, complicity, with people who are dedicated to the trafficking of undocumented immigrants,” said José Luis Llaven, prosecutor of Chiapas, at a press conference.
The Cubans interviewed said that not all migrants have the possibility of buying these documents because salaries are very low in Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico. “The papers, they say, are safe, just like the birth certificates they offer, and in a short period of time, if you have the possibility of the money,” explained one, “as long as you have the money, it works, and you get them quickly, in less than a week.”
Óscar, who worked in Chiapas and has already managed to reach Mexico City, agrees that migrants receive a precarious salary in that southern state because they do not have legal documents. “It’s a low salary, like 1,500 pesos ($88) a week, and they exploit you,” he said.
In addition, the prices of documents on the black market in Chiapas are higher for Cubans than for other migrants, explained activist Luis García Villagrán.
“It has to do with nationality. For a Central American, birth certificates cost between 5,000 and 15,000 Mexican pesos (the equivalent of between 300 and 900 dollars). While a migrant from Cuba or Venezuela had their certificates go up to 30,000 (1,700 dollars),” he said.
He said that the costs for migrants from Cuba and Venezuela who were stranded in Mexico due to Trump’s immigration policies are higher because they come from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the United States, which forces them to stay in this country so as not to return.
“It’s the way to act. They are supposed lawyers and processors who are actually scammers who sell to migrants with the promise that they will be able to leave Chiapas or that they will have rights in Mexico; they profit from their desperation,” he said.
One of the Cubans interviewed on condition of anonymity explained that other migrants who bought the documents have told those who stayed in Chiapas that they did manage to quickly reach other states, such as Mexico City or Monterrey, where the pay for the work is higher. He said this has caused more migrants to buy the services, and therefore, the costs of birth certificates and resident cards have started rising.
At the same time, the screening filters in immigration offices in the state have been tightened, explained activist Luis García Villagrán. “A permanent residency, for example, is now an exaggerated bureaucratic procedure due to so much corruption that has occurred among migrants who have been able to pay to advance. Their goal was to leave Chiapas, others to reach Mexico City, and others to reach places where they are doing better economically,” he said.
Óscar assures that he managed to leave Chipas for Mexico City without using illegal documents. And now he will have to start a new immigration process in the capital. He considers that “it is not fair” that others skip the process by paying to “have a good and dignified job and to be legal in the country.”
But he says he understands desperation. “No Cuban wants to return to Cuba.”
Source: Noticias Telemundo
