Mexico: Protecting Migrant Shelters Doesn't Curb Violence Against Them - Shelter Director

San Jose Migrant House in Huehuetoca, state of Mexico
Photo: Jesus Villaseca

La Jornada: Fernando Camacho Servín 

Translated by Thomas Mosley

Setting up protective measures for the shelters that protect immigrants has failed to curb violence against this group because, while police officers guard the premises, criminal groups continue to attack undocumented migrants on the routes they take every day, said Fray Tomás González, director of shelter “The 72” [named after 72 Central American migrants massacred in 2011].

“For some reason, when they have us take protective measures, they (the criminals) make more trouble. The shelter has turned into a bunker; it has cameras, lighting on the perimeter, police officers all around, but that doesn’t stop them from doing their misdeeds on the outside,” said the clergyman in an interview with La Jornada.

Paradoxically, resources which are used to care for migrants in special shelters have been used by criminals to attack others at transit points to the U.S. border, far from the public eye and the authorities.

"They threaten us here because we live here, but the real danger is in the migration route. It seems like the help we receive is just to shut us up, as if they were saying 'You want security? Here you go.' But what about out there? We, the defenders, are not the priority; it’s the migrants," González said.

The director of “The 72” has received several threats for his work in Tenosique [on the border with Guatemala, in the state of Tabasco], as has Rubén Figueroa, activist for the Meso-American Migrant Movement. He said that attempts to intimidate him have not stopped. Less than a week ago, they caught a man who was working on snagging undocumented immigrants within the shelter itself.

“The cause of all this is that migrants are still a commodity that puts a lot of money in the pockets of criminals and the authorities, who receive their share for turning a blind eye. We are facing a system of mass corruption where measures such as the Law for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders have failed,” he said. 

Spanish original