Mexico: Migrants Who Fled to US Border to be Deported

On Sunday, the Mexican government announced it will deport migrants who were staging a march to make visible their humanitarian plight looking for better opportunities, at the Mexican city of Tijuana, and made a break to the United State’s side of the border.

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“We aren't criminals! We are hard workers,” said the migrants protesting peacefully as they reached the U.S.border.

Migrants who are trying to reach the “American dream,” “ought not to act in such a way. They knew that there was no way they would enter North American territory in this fashion,” said Alfonso Navarrete Prida, secretary of governance, Alfonso Navarrete Prida.

The ministry emitted an official statement in which it lays out three guidelines for the migrants.

First, it characterizes the migrant’s flight to the border as “violent,” and “trying to hurt” members of Mexico’s federal police and “will be put at the disposition of the corresponding authorities, to be further deported by the Mexican customs authorities.”

Second, based on the articles 115, 143 and 144 of the Migration law, the National Institute of Migration (INM, for its acronym in Spanish), has the “mechanisms” necessary to “assist with “assisted return and deportation” in the case of any foreigner who “harms the existing legal framework.”

Third, the INM will coordinate with authorities to “detect the origin” of the alleged “violent” border rush, and will “reinforce the border” on the Mexico side with “agents of the Federal Police,” according to the ministry.

While the government characterizes the entire group as “violent” and their acts as reprehensible, it also says that there are “provocateurs” who put the whole caravan at risk, as well as their opportunities to gain refuge or asylum, according to La Verdad.

Some 500 Central American migrants made an attempt to cross over the border into the U.S. and were met with tear gas from the border patrol, on Saturday.

The migrants and protestors accompanying them reported seeing tear-gas canisters left on the floor, some of which resembled “military-style smoke canister from Defense Technology, whose website says it emits smoke for up to two minutes,” according to UPI news agency.  

The response from the U.S. government was to add additional security personnel at the border crossing, as protests are intensifying on both sides of the border.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) also suspended crossing, both in North and South directions, for pedestrians and vehicles at the San Ysidro port (Tijuana), starting at 11.30. am local time, reopening them about five hours later, and mentioned that “those persons [migrants] were stopped and turned back to Mexico.”

According to the National Migration Institute (INM, for its acronym in Spanish), 5,500 migrants are staying at a Tijuana Refuge and nearly 200 are currently placed in shelters.