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News > Latin America

Mexico Starts COVID-19 Vaccination of Migrants in Chiapas

  • Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, Sept. 20, 2021.

    Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, Sept. 20, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @RRNoticiasqro

Published 21 September 2021
Opinion

This Latin American country faces a strong migratory flow with 147,000 undocumented persons detected between January and August.

The Interior Secretary reported this Monday that Mexico began a COVID-19 vaccination campaign among undocumented migrants who are in the country.

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US Begins Deporting Haitians Camped Under Bridge in Texas Town

The National Migration Institute (INM) and the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) began the vaccination campaign in Tapachula, Chiapas. For this, a mobile health module was installed at the “21th Century” station where medical personnel and nurses attend to migrants. So far, the authorities have vaccinated 99 migrants from countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Haiti.

On Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced that Mexico has no problem in sheltering Haitian migrants "as long as they respect the laws." These statements were made after 13,000 irregular migrants began to be deported by the United States to Mexican territory.

Previously, however, the Associated Press agency reported that a Mexican official who preferred to remain anonymous stated that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) administration would also begin deporting Haitian migrants in the coming days.

Most Haitians left Brazil and Chile in August after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the expansion of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. According to Ebrard, however, the DHS information was misrepresented by human traffickers to encourage irregular migration.

Currently, Mexico faces a strong migratory flow with 147,000 undocumented persons detected between January and August, which represents three times the number observed in the same period of 2020. On the northern border, 212,000 migrants were detained in July by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The Mexican authorities have received strong criticism due to the deployment of the National Guard and the Army on the southern border, where social networks recorded scenes of violence against Central American and Caribbean migrants.

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