Translated by Helena Redman
During the period between 2010 and the first quarter of 2013, Mexico repatriated 239,252 migrants. Every year our country spends over 82 million dollars sending foreign migrants back to their countries of origin, according to the INM. Of those repatriated, 92% are Central American.
This figure is equivalent to the total income gained from the entry of foreigners (tourists, workers, students etc.) from January to March of this year – that is, a quarter of the approximate 380 million dollars earned by the state in 2012 in that capacity.
Another way to measure expenditure on deportations is this: last year, the INM received over 165 million dollars to carry out deportations, including the authorized budget from the Chamber of Deputies and the assignment of resources specifically earned from foreign visits and residences.
Before being returned to their countries, each migrant passed through one of the 32 permanent or 27 temporary centers provided by the INM. Fourteen of the temporary centers are type “A” (providing accommodation for no longer than 48 hours) and the rest, type “B”, will accommodate migrants for no longer than one week. However, the agency, which is part of the Secretariat of Government Relations, admits that these buildings are in need of repair, maintenance and re-equipment.
In order to deal with the irregular flow of migrants, the institute is collaborating with 156 shelters located throughout the country and that provide protection to detained migrants, who sometimes wait hours, days or weeks for their cases to be resolved. Additionally, the agency uses “the support of 13 religious shelters” that are collaborating with its state offices.
Although these accommodations have not gone over their capacity of 4,424 people a day, the average attendance being 1,900, the INM is currently focusing its concern on the traveling conditions of the migrants, which have been made worse by the activities of criminal groups.
The Beta groups for migrant protection have reported a rise in support: in 2011 they offered guidance to 286,868 people, and in 2012 this figure increased to 323,604. The social assistance provided – for example, food, shelter, medical attention and hospital transfers – is also on the increase. Last year, 88,501 foreigners were accommodated in the aforementioned centers, 79,426 of whom were then returned to their countries of origin.
In legal terms, Mexico has 65 entry routes by air (airports), 67 in ports and 59 land crossings, as well as an undetermined number of unauthorized crossings on the easily penetrable southern border.
For this reason, the agency has special alerts for the concentration of migrants in Tamaulipas and Coahuila; in 2012, over 162,000 Mexicans deported from the United States converged upon these two regions alone, in addition to the Central Americans seeking to cross the northern border.
According to the INM’s document, the number of unauthorized crossings into Mexico is around 300,000 people per year – almost all of them Central Americans with the intention of entering the United States. However, there is also a fringe group that, following expulsion from the US, remains close to the border in order to try to re-enter the country, creating more and more risk for both migrants and residents.
“Dissuasion and detention are not determining factors for the migration problem. The violence generated by organized crime has caused an increase in human trade and trafficking, abductions and extortion, disappearances, robberies and murders, as well as the appearance of gangs in some areas of Mexico,” the INM’s text states.A pilot program that Washington was supporting to fly repatriated Mexicans back to our capital (from which the INM would transport them back to their own communities) has been suspended. In 2012, 2,364 Mexicans were able to return to their homes in this way, but up to now, it has not been clear what will happen to this program.
It is also unclear how much support will be available from the United States in this area, and what form this aid will take through the Mérida Initiative, a program on whose basis the INM received almost 1.3 million dollars in 2012. This money was used for staff training and the establishment of teams to collect biometric data from migrants crossing the southern border.
As La Jornada reported (04/19/13), only between 15 and 20 per cent of Central American migrants find the so-called “American dream”. The rest are ejected by U.S. or Mexican authorities. Spanish original