How Mexican cartels control the flow of migrants to the US border

Author MARIA VERZA

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — The first place many migrants spend the night after entering Mexico from Guatemala is a large, roof-top, fenced-in building on a rural ranch. They call it the “chicken coop” and they can’t get out until they pay the cartel that runs it.

Meeting of migrants at the US-Mexico border reached a four-year lowbut just days before the US election, a key issue of which is immigration, migrants continue to flow into Mexico.

While US authorities credit their Mexican counterparts with stemming the flow to their shared border, organized crime maintains tighter controls on who moves here than a handful of federal agents and National Guardsmen standing by the river.

Kidnapped migrants who pay a $100 ransom for their release have a stamp to signal that they have paid. Between January and August, in this southernmost corner of Mexico alone, immigration agents intercepted more than 150,000 migrants, believed to be only part of the flow.

Six migrant families interviewed by The Associated Press who went through the initial abduction and were held pending payment explained how it works. A Mexican federal official confirmed much of this. All of them wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

Mexican immigration agents had detected 925,000 undocumented migrants through August of this year, well above last year’s annual total and triple the number in 2021. Still, they deported only 16,500, a tiny fraction of previous years.

The Rev. Heyman Vazquez, a priest in Ciudad Hidalgo along the Suchiate River that separates Mexico and Guatemala, sees it every day.

“They (the cartels) decide who passes and who doesn’t,” Vasquez said. “The number of migrants they accept every day is high, and they do it in full view of the authorities.”

Pay to continue north

On Monday morning, Luis Alonso Valle, a 43-year-old Honduran man traveling with his wife and two children, disembarked from a raft held together by cameras and planks of a truck that was transporting them through Suchiate to Mexico.

They hadn’t gone 50 yards into Ciudad Hidalgo when three men on a motorcycle pulled up to tell them they couldn’t keep going. Then, seeing the journalists, they left. The family looked scared.

In the central plaza of Ciudad Hidalgo, Valle asked for a van that could take them 23 miles (37 kilometers) to Tapachula, considered the main entry point into southern Mexico. After climbing aboard, the driver whispered to the journalists to stop recording. “They (organized crime) are going to stop me,” he said.

This is often how migrants arrive at the ranch. Taxi or minibus drivers working for the cartel take them there and hand them over. They are forced to sleep on the ground.

“There were more than 500 people there, some of them had been there for 10 to 15 days,” said a Venezuelan woman who was freed on Sunday with her husband and two children. “Those who don’t have money stay, and those who decide to pay leave,” she said.

A 28-year-old baker from Ecuador was taken to a bank to withdraw money to free himself, his wife, daughter and four other relatives. His family was the insurance against his return.

After paying, migrants are photographed, and a stamp is placed on their skin.

Armed men stop vans and taxis heading to Tapachula and check for stamps. Those who do not have them are sent back. The migrants said that once they got to Tapachula, they were told to wash them off to avoid trouble with other gangs.

According to the Fray Matias de Cordova NGO in Tapachula, at least one-third of the hundreds of migrants they have served this year have arrived with stamps. Director Enrique Vidal Olascoaga said those who cannot pay are often sexually assaulted.

None of the families interviewed by the AP said they had been harmed.

An official with knowledge of the migrants’ statements to the investigation said more than 100 migrants released by security forces in Ciudad Hidalgo in September, as well as a group of several dozen migrants who were fired upon by soldiers on October 1. have gone through similar kidnapping and extortion scenarios.

Cartel-controlled border

A crackdown on organized crime on Mexico’s southern border with rising violence spawned the struggle between the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. The state of Chiapas is just one of their battlegrounds, but it is key to controlling human, drug and arms smuggling routes from Central America. According to experts, migrants have become the most profitable commodity.

The increasingly aggressive presence of the cartels is becoming an obstacle for organizations trying to help migrants. Earlier this month gunmen killed an openly Catholic priest in Chiapas. And Vidal said that sometimes groups prevent migrants from receiving humanitarian aid.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said the government is dealing with violence but refuses to confront the cartels. It appears to be following a tactic that was started during the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, transport migrants from the north back to the south depleting their resources and keeping them away from the US border, exposing them to more kidnappings and extortion.

Ciudad Hidalgo Mayor Elmer Vázquez said he knew nothing about safe houses for migrants working in the area, and said his city always looks out for migrants.

But the Rev. Vazquez (no relation to the mayor), who has spent two decades advocating for migrants, said prosecutors, the National Guard, the special prosecutor for crimes against migrants do nothing even when crimes are reported.

“They collude with organized crime and of course make it look like they’re doing their job,” he said.

A race against time

In August The US government has expanded access to CBP Onean online portal used to schedule asylum appointments at the border south of Chiapas. Mexico asked for the move to ease pressure on migrants who have to travel north to make appointments.

The Mexican government has since opened “mobility corridors” to help migrants from CBP One travel safely from southern Mexico to the US border. Designation is only the first step, but most applicants are allowed to wait for a lengthy process within the US