MONDAY, OCTOBER 25 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY PAULINA VILLEGASYaneli Castillo fled Honduras
with her two young children
after gang members killed her
husband in front of their house
and threatened that she would
be next.
The 29-year-old arrived in
sout hern Mexico four months
ago and filed an asylum claim.
She was still waiting for her
application to be processed when
new threats arrived — text mes-
sages from gang members who
said they knew where to find her,
she said.
“I was trying to do the right
thing, and waited and waited
with all my papers, and they
never helped me,” she said. “So I
decided to join the caravan out of
fear.”
Castillo is one of several thou-
sand migrants who, desperate
for work and fleeing poverty and
violence, decided to march out of
the border city of Tapachula on
Saturday. Mexico’s National
Guard forces tried to stop them,
but the contingent pushed
through. They continued their
trek Sunday, hoping to eventual-
ly reach Mexico City.
The caravan is made up of
Central American migrants, as
well as some Haitians, many of
whom say they have been stuck
in legal limbo, waiting for asy-
lum applications to be processed
for as long as a year. Under
Mexican law, migrants who file a
claim in Tapachula must stay
there until their claims are pro-
cessed.
“I just want to be somewhere
where I can work and my kids
can be safe,” Castillo said.
“Whether it is Mexico or the
United States, I don’t care.”
The bottleneck in Tapachula —
the main point of entry into
southern Mexico by land — re-
flects the country’s struggle to
manage the number of migrants
arriving in recent months. As of
September, authorities had re-
ceived over 90,000 asylum
claims this year, according to
official data, roughly 70 percent
of which are processed in Tapa-
chula, where the country’s larg-
est immigration detention center
is located.
The massive number of appli-
cations has overwhelmed an al-
ready flawed and underfunded
immigration system, especially
the agency responsible for pro-
cessing asylum claims, human
rights groups and advocacy
groups say. Rather than a cara-
van, one activist said the swell of
migrants pushing north is more
akin to a demonstration.
“This is a march for dignity
and justice for migrants,” said
Luis García Villagrán, a human
rights activist from Mexico who
joined the march. “The only
thing we are asking for is for
migrants to be allowed to stay in
this country in a l egal and orga-
nized way.”
Villagran estimated that there
are about 4,000 migrants headed
toward Mexico’s capital, where
many hope their asylum claims
will be expedited. That number
pales in comparison with the
large migrant caravans through
Mexico in 2018 and 2019.
“It was only a matter of time
for this caravan to happen,” said
Raymundo Tamayo, Mexico di-
rector for the International Res-
cue Committee humanitarian aid
group. “It is the result of an
asylum system in crisis.”
To deal with the massive vol-
ume of asylum applications in
Tapachula, the Mexican govern-
ment has turned an Olympic
stadium into a temporary pro-
cessing center, with waiting lines
of up to 7,000 people a day.
“Tapachula has become a p ris-
on city for migrants,” Villagran
said, moments before the contin-
gent encountered another secu-
rity blockade north of the city on
Sunday.
Jose Pineda, from El Salvador,
joined the caravan to try to reach
Mexicali, a city situated just
across the U.S. border, where he
once worked. But as he tried to
travel north Sunday, immigra-
tion officers detained him and
dropped him in Tapachula, he
said.
“I don’t know what to do or
how to survive here any longer,”
Pineda said, in tears. “I don’tunderstand why do they not
allow me to leave.”
The trek comes as President
Biden faces mounting pressure
over immigration. U.S. authori-
ties detained more than 1.7 mil-
lion undocumented immigrants
along the Mexican border during
the 2021 fiscal year that ended in
September, and arrests by the
Border Patrol reached the high-
est levels ever recorded, accord-
ing to U.S. Customs and Border
Protection data obtained by The
Washington Post.
Conservative critics blame the
recent surge on Biden’s decision
to overturn some Trump-era pol-
icies, including the Migrant Pro-
tection Protocols, a program that
sends all asylum seekers back to
Mexico to wait for their claims to
be processed. The White House
recently announced plans to re-
implement the border policy,
also known as “Remain in Mexi-
co,” in mid-November, if the
Mexican government agrees to
accept asylum seekers, which
could further strain its immigra-
tion system.
Migrant advocacy groups,
meanwhile, have lambasted the
Biden administration for con-
tinuing to use Title 42, an emer-
gency health provision first used
by the Trump administration to
rapidly expel migrants.
Activists and human rights
groups are warning that Mexico
is resorting to arbitrary deten-
tions, deportations and other
questionable tactics as it grap-
ples with the rising number of
migrants arriving at its border.
“Mexico is no longer just a
transit country, but a destination
as well, a nation where people
have the right to claim asylum,
which implies a responsibility
from the government to be able
to offer that,” Tamayo said. “Un-
fortunately, the system in place is
not equipped to respond to the
magnitude of the crisis.”
By Sunday afternoon, mi-
grants trying to reach Mexico
City were exhausted and hungry
after walking only a f ew miles
under the scorching sun and
stopped at a nearby town to rest.
“There is no food for all of us,”
Villagran said. “We will need to
prioritize women and children,
but we need help.”
[email protected]Migrants ‘march for dignity’
Tired of awaiting asylum
processing, a caravan
heads f or the c apitalJOSE TORRES/REUTERSThousands of migrants from Central America walk in a c aravan o n a highway in Tapachula, M exico, on
Sunday, headed north t oward Mexico’s capital to apply for asylum and refugee status.
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S108 3xMARCO UGARTE/ASSOCIATED PRESSMigrants, most of whom are from Central America, traveling in a caravan heading north, stop to re st
in Tapachula, Mexico, on Sunday. Many are fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries.