Mexico used funds for the economic development of Central America to restrict migrants from those countries

By María Verza - The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY.- The Mexican government, in the midst of one of the biggest recent migratory crises and under pressure from the United States, allocated part of the resources of a cooperation and development fund for Central America to its measures to contain migration.

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador used more than $ 4 million from the Mexico Fund

 according to information and documents obtained by the news agency The Associated Press (AP).

Several of these migrants ended up being repatriated from Mexico or abandoned to their fate in that country.

Fondo México was created by the Mexican Government in 2011 to contribute to the economic and social development of the nations of Central America and the Caribbean.

With the money, various projects have been financed, especially infrastructure.

However, in mid-2019 it was redesigned to address the migration crisis in Mexico, a few weeks after the Donald Trump Administration threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican imports unless the Mexican authorities stopped the flow of people heading to the border. Mexican-American.

["Human hunting."

Mexico locks up hundreds of migrants who formed caravans]

The countries reached an agreement: Mexico avoided late tariffs on its products in exchange for mobilizing thousands of troops from its newly created National Guard to its southern border and accepting that people seeking asylum in the United States have to wait in the Mexican territory while their cases are processed;

This program is called Stay in Mexico.  

But it was not disclosed at the time that Mexico also changed the fund's goals, distorting the purpose of that aid money, according to analysts and experts.

The Mexican

directly to requests for comment made by the AP on the redesign of the fund and on whether it happened due to US demands;

instead, the foreign ministry only spoke of how improvements were made to shelters and detention centers for migrants.

Honduran asylum seekers who were returned to the Mexican side of the border to await their process with the "Stay in Mexico" program, on August 24, 2019.Reuters / REUTERS

The change to the fund in the middle of last year is "a recomposition of the migration vision completely aimed at containment, which

which was the initial objective of the Government," lamented Tonatiuh Guillén, formerly in charge of the Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) who resigned a few months after the arrival of López Obrador to the presidency. 

[This is how thousands of Guatemalan children were stolen and sold]

The Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), which depends on the Foreign Ministry and manages the Mexico Fund, showed from requests for information that it has allocated almost 150 million dollars since 2011 to projects in 11 Central American countries and the Caribbean, including Belize, Costa Rica, Haiti, El Salvador or Jamaica.

AMEXCID informed the AP that in July 2019, 60 million pesos (about $ 3.3 million) were allocated to improvements in detention centers and shelters.

Migrant girl dies in Mexican territory

May 21, 201900: 28

In September of that same year, another 14 million pesos (just over 700,000 dollars) were used for transfers of asylum seekers returned by the United States, according to information obtained with two requests for information.

López Obrador bet during his campaign to multiply cooperation with Central America

so that emigration was an option and not an obligation.

 with work programs in the field such as

, and in the first three months of his government - which began in December 2018 - granted 15,000 humanitarian visas to Central Americans who arrived in caravans.

However, with the crisis of tariffs and pressure from Trump, President López Obrador hastened the deployment of the Mexican National Guard to stop the crossings, changed the person in charge of migration, appointed the military as heads of the migrant agency in some states and raids, arrests and deportations multiplied.

[At least one killed in a riot at an immigration station in southern Mexico]

One of the probably most radical changes was accepting that more than 60,000 asylum seekers in the United States were returned through the northern Mexican border to await their processing in territories controlled by the cartels, which according to activists increases the vulnerability of people seeking refuge. and violates, according to NGO, basic rights of international conventions.

The federal government has not provided clear information on

, but the foreign ministry said months ago that more than half had "decided to return to their countries."

Asylum seekers from Honduras who were returned to Mexico from the United States outside a Mexican immigration center in Matamoros in August 2019.Reuters

The authorities assure that the improvements in the centers paid with the Mexico Fund resulted in an improvement for the migrants and insist that the transfers are "voluntary."

However,

clearly

, despite their asylum process slowing down, due to lack of information and desperation, according to Maureen Meyer, vice president and director for Mexico of the Office in Washington for Latin American Affairs.

The changes in the destination of the funds are "a clear sign of how the López Obrador administration changed its immigration priorities in response to the demands of the Trump government," denounced Meyer.

[Migrants in Mexico ask for action against the risk of contagion of coronavirus]

In 2019, according to AMEXCID, the current government approved 62 million from the Mexico Fund for two of its main social programs in El Salvador and Honduras: “Sembrando vida”, to support the countryside, and another for young people from those countries.

Both are aimed at injecting resources to create jobs, but there is no data on how much of this money is already in the hands of its beneficiaries.

The rest of the resources managed by the current administration, almost 32 million dollars, were for projects related to migration and programs aimed at facing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The

In May, the federal government ordered the elimination of the Mexico Fund as part of López Obrador's efforts to eliminate many trusts, considering them as suspected sources of corruption.

However, the Mexican Foreign Ministry added that the closing of the fund may take years, until all the commitments acquired are concluded.

"It is clear that the original purpose of this fund was distorted and it is also clear that we do not have enough information on the exercise of spending," summarized Guillén, the former head of Migration in Mexico.