RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The number of Covid-19 infections in Mexico is increasing daily. By the end of July, some 416,000 people had been infected and over 46,000 people had died as a result, according to official figures. The Ministry of Health classifies at least 15 states as “maximum risk of infection”. Meanwhile, the country’s restrictive migration policy is being tightened and refugees and migrants are exposed to the coronavirus pandemic unprotected.
The excesses of Mexico’s migration policy are at their most violent during the coronavirus pandemic, says Aldo Ledón. According to the activist and member of the non-governmental organization Voces Mesoamericanas, the responsibility lies with the state: “The government ignores people seeking protection and commits human rights violations. Sick migrants are not treated and others are not offered protection from infection, for instance.”
He points out that these people are “victims of forced relocation, sexual violence, organized crime, political persecution or economic impoverishment”. They are now being pushed to the outermost edges of society and are exposed to “multiple crises”.
Rita Robles, human rights activist and staff member of the human rights NGO Fray Matías Córdova, adds that they are already deprived of any human rights, such as “the right to freedom of movement, work, health or education”. Precarious living conditions have long been the status quo for migrants in Mexico: “Not even essential needs are sufficiently covered by the state migration services.”
According to Aldo Ledón, understanding the historical political context that led to the current crisis is crucial. In fact, the crisis is far from being the result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Mexico is traditionally considered a safe haven, particularly for Central American citizens. The country’s economy – in particular the casual labor sector – has long benefited from migrants’ cheap labor. It was only through the changing discourse of 21st century governments that migration was presented as a “new phenomenon” that had to be tackled for national security concerns.
Aldo Ledón regards linking national security with migration as controversial. “People in need have the right to migrate and the Mexican state has the duty to ensure that this right is respected.”. The stigmatization of migrants is also a recurrent topic in the discourse ofPresident Ándres Manuel López Obrador.
The National Institute for Migration (INM) is officially responsible for migrants entering Mexico. It is in charge of implementing the federal migration policy. In compliance with government guidelines, it records migrants on arrival at Mexico’s southern borders with Guatemala and Belize. It is also tasked with providing them with information, protection and accommodation. However, Aldo Ledón says that people are only recorded “so that they can be arrested and then deported”. They would also be held against their will in state accommodation (estaciónes migratorias) – called “hostels” in government rhetoric. To call the state accommodations “hostels” is pure euphemism, since they are actually nothing more than provisionally prepared deportation prisons, he argues.
In late February, the Mexican Ministry of Health recorded the first Covid-19 cases. As a result, a nationwide health distancing order was imposed. People were required to refrain from all non-essential activities and to stay home. But migrants living in state shelters were poorly advised of the pandemic, reports Rita Robles. For a long time, the government failed to provide an answer to the question of how Covid-19 was handled in the shelters.
It was only in early April that the INM introduced a health protection plan. However, it quickly became clear that there would be no realistic means of implementing the protection measures: “The INM has no resources to maintain an adequate standard of hygiene in the state shelters, nor to care for those who are infected,” said Robles.
The situation became even more critical when the Mexican media reported the death of a refugee in an migrant holding center in Tenosique (Tabasco). A total of 41 people in custody reportedly protested against inadequate health conditions and demanded their immediate release. A fire broke out during the riots. Rather than rescuing the captives, officers allegedly blocked the shelters’ exits, the left-wing alternative news website Animalpolítico reported on April 1st. While the majority managed to free themselves, Héctor Rolando Barrientos Dardón (42), a Guatemalan refugee, died in the fire.
Fray Gabriel Romero, director of the non-governmental migrant shelter La 72 in Tenosique, is not surprised by the riots. The detained migrants are exposed to high physical and psychological distress. In the aforementioned migrant holding center, they lived crammed together in very confined spaces. At the time of the uprising, some 300 people were housed here, with a maximum capacity of only 100 places. “There were regular reports of disease outbreaks such as salmonella caused by spoiled food,” recalls Gabriel Romero.
One case that particularly upsets the head of La 72 is the refusal to give medical treatment to a captive suffering from AIDS. The captive was forced to flee from her deeply conservative homeland because of her transsexual gender identity. He can understand the rioters: “This is obviously the only way to draw attention to their plight.”
According to Rita Robles, similarly precarious conditions have led to repeated protests in the migrant holding centers across the country. There is a constant lack of food and other essential supplies. Running water is also a rare luxury good. In addition, the government officials’ handling of the migrants is condescending and marked by racism.
Voces Mesoamericanas and Fray Matías Córdova, together with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), scientists and civil society activists, have consequently joined forces on April 2nd to petition for the release of the migrants from state shelters. In fact, in late April this was approved by a court order and migrants from the holding centers in Mexico City, Monterrey, Tapachula, Tenosique, Tijuana and Villahermosa were released.
What at first seemed like a victory in the fight for the health protection of migrants soon turned out to be an actual worsening of an already dramatic situation. “The INM transferred migrants from the holding centers in the north to the southern border of the country and simply abandoned them there without further assistance and with the order to return to their home countries on their own,” reports Rita Robles.
For a large proportion of the migrants, however, a return is impossible. They are now homeless and live on the streets in the border towns of Tenosique and Tapachula. There, too, the discriminatory handling of migrants persists: “In Tapachula, public places where they had previously stayed overnight were cordoned off. The migrants are expelled by all state authorities,” Rita Robles notes regretfully.
Over the past ten years, civil society mobilization against the humanitarian plight of migrants has increased. NGOs and church institutions now form an important counterweight to the restrictive migration policy. Despite scarce resources and under threat of reprisals by the government, they provide independent infrastructure for alternative aid measures.
Employees of Voces Mesoamericanas or Fray Matías Córdova are continuously present at the border crossings in the south of the country to monitor the work of the INM. They also provide medical care and legal assistance to those crossing into the country. If necessary, they organize the transfer of the vulnerable to alternative accommodation, such as La 72, in order to prevent them from being detained in state institutions.
Gabriel Romero has many questions for the government. He believes there is no viable reason for recording migrants and detaining them in Mexico: “The majority of those who come to Mexico don’t want to stay at all, they want to travel further north to the US. They are already being prevented from doing so at the country’s southern border, to the delight of US President Donald Trump,” says Gabriel Romero. He refers to the meeting between López Obrador and Trump in Washington on July 8th, 2020, to celebrate the North American Free Trade Agreement (USMCA, formerly NAFTA), in force since July 1st.
Trump reportedly thanked the Mexican president for having “stationed 27,000 soldiers on Mexico’s southern border, thereby halting migration”. In fact, according to Mexican Defense Minister Luis Sandoval, 6,500 soldiers are currently stationed on Mexico’s southern border. Gabriel Romero explains that Trump had already warned Mexico’s president in 2018 that free trade would only continue if the country managed to “control” the migration flow on its northern border. According to Gabriel Romero, Trump’s populist plan to have a border wall built between the countries has now become obsolete thanks to Mexico’s harsh migration policy.
Nevertheless, Rita Robles, Aldo Ledón and Fray Gabriel Romero expect a massive increase in migration figures in the near future. People are likely to leave their native countries for existential reasons in order to migrate to the North. For Aldo Ledón, the fight for human rights in Mexico is a vicious circle. It is clear that the work of activists has no real chance of succeeding against the government and its discriminatory migration policy. “We know that we cannot win this fight. What drives us is the principle of losing as little as possible.”