We Will Continue To Attend Undocumented Migrants: Mexico

Mexican authorities do not know whether the 1,200 Central American migrants who currently travel over southern Mexico will reach the capital or will undertake an alternative route to the U.S, Interior Minister Adan Lopez stated on Friday.

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"This decision is up to migrants. We will continue to attend them in any case," Lopez stated, adding that the National Institute of Migration (INM) regularized the migratory status of 800 migrants who left the caravan voluntarily.

Mexico currently experiences a record migratory flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) "found" over 1,5 million undocumented migrants on the border with Mexico from January to December.

In the same period, the INM detected over 190,000 migrants, a figure that triples the number reported in 2020, when the Ministry of the Interior had to deport nearly 74,300 undocumented migrants.

Lopez warned of the dangerous conditions that migrant children face in their travel through the Central American Isthmus. "Parent migrants often take their children with them on this journey because human traffickers tell them that this decision allegedly facilitates the whole family's entry to the United States. However, there is no guarantee in this regard," he stressed.

The Mexican Migration Policy Unit estimates that the arrival of undocumented foreign children to this Latin American country has increased by 377 percent this year. NGO Borderless Peoples member Irineo Mujica also estimated that there are between 400 and 500 minors in the caravan that currently travels throughout southern Mexico.

"We are doing everything possible to give fair treatment to migrants transiting through our territory. However, if we do not receive help from other countries involved in this crisis, we will not be able to achieve the expected results," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) stressed.