Get out of hell to fall into a world of corruption, kidnapping and extortion.
That is the story of hundreds of Venezuelans who, drowned by the repression unleashed by the Government of Nicolás Maduro, have left Venezuela with the hope of breathing airs of freedom in the United States, but they encountered the immigration policies of Donald Trump, a wall that it has prevented being able to request asylum in the United States.
They have had to wait in Mexico, where according to a Human Rights Watch report, released this Friday, they have suffered harassment from the police, immigration agents or criminal organizations.
"I don't know which is worse, if being here or in Venezuela," one of the migrants sums up the horror suffered on Mexican soil.
HRW conducted dozens of interviews with Venezuelan migrants stranded in Mexico.
In the report, he affirms that almost all the Venezuelans interviewed claimed to be victims of the political persecution unleashed by Maduro against critical voices, as well as having suffered torture or harassment.
Maduro has developed a systematic and brutal repression in Venezuela and international human rights organizations have documented that the regime has committed crimes against humanity against society.
Due to this crisis, 5.5 million people have left the country, such as Mayra, a human rights lawyer and activist from an opposition party, whose house was raided by government agents, who violently detained her, blindfolded her and her they dragged a truck, where he lost consciousness due to the blows and electric shocks he received for six hours.
Mayra has told HRW that the agents took her to a camp where a man threatened to kill her if she did not leave Venezuela and desisted from participating in opposition demonstrations.
When they returned her home and while she was recovering from her injuries, a friend filed a police report, for which she had to go to a dependency where, she has stated, she was kidnapped by two people, who also told her that her complaint was destroyed. For the police.
She decided to leave Venezuela in the hope of obtaining asylum in the United States.
Due to Trump's immigration policies, Mayra has been stranded in Mexico since 2019, within the program called
Remain in Mexico
(Stay in Mexico).
The program began in January 2019. Since then, US immigration authorities have sent 71,000 asylum seekers to Mexico, including hundreds of children, many of them with disabilities.
"Tens of thousands of migrant families, including Venezuelans seeking protection from torture, political persecution and arbitrary detentions, have been abandoned by the governments of the United States and Mexico in a context in which they suffer extortion and violence in Mexico" , has affirmed José Miguel Vivanco, director for the Americas of HRW.
This is the case of Josué, who left Venezuela with his family and reached Reynosa, where everyone was waiting to appear at the border and apply for asylum.
Their nightmare began at the hotel where they were staying, when a man approached them in the lobby and told them that he worked for the "owner" of the border bridge and that they had to pay a "commission" of $ 300 per person to be able to cross. related Joshua.
The man had to pay for that first extortion, but the nightmare did not end.
Days later his extortionist returned and this time demanded $ 3,000.
“Josué's family did not have that amount of money and they were afraid to keep waiting, so they decided to swim across the river to get to the US There, the authorities detained them, received their asylum application and sent them to Matamoros as part of the program
Stay in Mexico
.
Josué never reported the crime because, as he pointed out, "everyone knows that criminals drive the border," warns HRW, which states that 1,600 Venezuelans still have pending asylum applications under the framework of
Stay in Mexico
.
Although President Joe Biden seeks to end one of the most cruel measures of the Trump administration by receiving asylum seekers living in the Matamoros border camp in Mexico, HRW warns that the new administration “continues to invoke dubious health reasons to expel asylum seekers who arrive at the border, and has not taken any measures to solve the situation of 30,000 individuals whose asylum applications were unjustly rejected after being sent to Mexico ”, including restrictions made invoking the fear of spread of covid-19 in the United States.
HRW in its report recommends that the Biden government put an end to these expulsions, allow asylum seekers whose cases were dismissed within the framework of
Stay in Mexico to
start a new process in the United States and instruct the immigration authorities to accept the applications. of those who want to enter the United States for humanitarian reasons.
The agency has also issued recommendations to the Government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has developed an aggressive policy against migrants after Trump threatened in May 2019 with a 5% rate on any import, if Mexico did not stop the migration.
For HWR, Mexico must refuse to accept new expulsions of asylum seekers and investigate and prosecute those responsible for crimes against migrants.
"While the Biden government finishes reversing this abusive program [
Stay in Mexico
], the Mexican must ensure that asylum seekers can safely remain in Mexico and access essential services," Vivanco demands.
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