US expels migrants by plane to Mexico for exercising: UN

The United States is expelling migrants from Central America by plane to Tapachula, Chiapas. There, families are transported on National Institute of Migration (INM) buses, which leave them abandoned at the border with Guatemala, according to a report from the Southeast Mexico Human Rights Monitoring and Monitoring Group (COMDHSM). ). The report deplores that on August 9 and 10, two flights from McAllen, Texas, where Central American families expelled from the United States under Title 42 were traveling were discovered.

Title 42 is a provision put into effect under an agreement between the government of former President Donald Trump and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador under which the United States carried out express deportations under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, Joe Biden’s government announced that these express expulsions will also be carried out by plane to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. For the first time, flights also went to Chiapas. It is common for the United States to deport Mexican nationals by air, but so far Central American citizens have not been flown to land in Mexico.

“They are not documented. They leave them here without any help. They arrive at night, people don’t know where they are, they pray disoriented. They even tell them there is a bus waiting in Guatemala but there is nothing,” said Andres Toribio, president of El Belén Home for Migrants in Cebu, Guatemala. On the days with the largest influx, up to 300 people arrived in 5 buses, according to Animal Político.

political animal He requested comment from the National Institute of Migration, which said it had no information.

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In recent days, Reuters and the Associated Press announced the new US plan to deport Central Americans without giving the option to seek asylum. The Washington Post also documented two trips to Villahermosa, Tabasco, from Brownsville, Texas. The same process was followed for expulsion: INM buses that left them at the border with Guatemala.

This practice of abandoning migrants at the border is not new. Mexico has implemented it since implementing the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), under which more than 70,000 asylum seekers were expelled to cities in northern Mexico between 2019 and 2021. Many of the migrants expelled in Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, were transferred to Tapachula, citing security reasons.. With the implementation of Section 42, the abandonments on the border remained, although in this case it is a double deportation: the United States expelled them from its border and Mexico placed them on the border with Guatemala.

This new practice places the economic burden on the United States, which is responsible for bringing Central America to southern Mexico. Otherwise, the result is the same.

“Expulsions of this kind put the lives of people in need of international protection at grave risk and significantly violate the right to seek asylum,” the committee said in a statement.

The United Nations agency, has also been shown Worried about these trips. “People or families on these flights who have urgent protection needs are at risk of returning to the same risks they fled in their countries of origin in Central America, without any opportunity to assess and address those needs,” he said through a statement.

The humanitarian situation is considered even more serious for people who are transported on flights from #EEUU towards the southern border of Mexico, threatening the right of non-refoulement.

– UNHCR Mexico (AcnurMexico) August 11, 2021