Migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border, including thousands of migrant deaths in the Arizona desert, have long drawn alarm. Recent federal data shows record numbers of migrant deaths in U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s El Paso Sector, which includes New Mexico and far west Texas. In March, 40 migrants died and several dozen more were seriously injured after a fire broke out inside an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, a border city in Mexico across from El Paso.
But the rising death toll in southern Mexico, fueled in part by U.S.-backed immigration containment policies in Mexico, has been largely overlooked, human rights groups say.
Relatedly, “A view from a migrant caravan where thousands had hoped to make it to the U.S.”
PERALTA: … The government started sending a bunch of buses over and told them, we’ll take you to a nearby town and process you, so get on the buses. But it wasn’t long before the migrants found out that immigration officials were lying about where they were sending them, and authorities also started separating families, so the migrants started trying to get off the buses, and it was chaos. …
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FADEL: Do we know what ultimately happened to those people?
PERALTA: … That woman and a good 2 or 3,000 migrants were put on buses, and they ended up in a bunch of little towns across southern Mexico. We managed to track down a group that was left in a tiny town near Tuxtla, and I found Maria Isabel Tovar, who was desperately looking for her son. He had just turned 18, and she says the bus that they were on made a sudden stop, and authorities told her son to get off, and they told her to stay on. …
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FADEL: I mean, is this normal to move migrants, separate them this way?
PERALTA: It is. And it gives you a glimpse at Mexican immigration policy. What authorities are doing is trying to make it harder and harder for migrants to reach the border within the U.S. And migrants rights advocates here say that the U.S. has actually managed to build a wall on its southern border, and they say that that wall is Mexico
The USA doesn’t like to admit that Mexico follows the lead of American policymakers. The best way for Americans to help make crossing Mexico safer for migrants is to fix our own immigration policies. Yes, there will still be big problems with Mexican cartels, but they will have fewer vulnerable people to victimize.
Exactly, and for whatever the moral obligation is worth in international politics (ask a Kurd, it’s not much), those “Mexican” cartels are stuffed full of American money they use to buy American guns and operate the way they do at least in part because of American drug laws (a lot of “drug” cartels get more money from kidnapping and other crimes these days, so that’s a bit more complicated now (like, get rid of drug prohibition overnight and organized crime would still be a problem in Mexico), but our drug laws definitely contributed to this complicated situation)
