Yorje Pérez Moreno traveled thousands of kilometers to reach Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
He had to leave everything behind: family, friends, studies and his country, Venezuela, from which he fled due to the violence of the state security forces that persecuted him for having participated in the protests against the government.
“My dream was to finish college, but they wouldn't let me
.
They beat me, chased me and threatened to imprison me,
that's why I had to leave, ”explains Moreno, 23 years old.
In early August, when he was finally a few miles from the US border, he took a taxi with a friend who accompanied him to request asylum at the border.
"You're not from here.
You are Venezuelan and you come to ask for asylum, right? ”,
Asked the driver who, without giving him time to ask for help, lowered the car insurance and began to drive around the city, while making calls to other people and asking for money .
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Panicked, Pérez and his friend paid more than $ 600 to be released, before being confined in the "safe houses" where drug cartels hold people they kidnap at the border.
After being extorted, he had to change hotels for fear of being located and because he saw
how armed men came to look for another migrant person.
The next day he crossed a border bridge to request asylum but, despite explaining the dangers he had suffered firsthand, the US authorities returned him to Mexico. “
We live in fear because it is a very corrupt area.
All the people tell you that the cartels impose the rules, the narco is the law, ”he says with dismay.
Pérez's case shows the harsh reality that migrants face in Mexico, a problem that is analyzed in the most recent report by Human Rights First, a Washington-based human rights organization,
which has registered 6,356 since January. violent attacks
- including rape, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking, and other assaults - against migrants who were deported to Mexico or people who were prevented from seeking asylum at the border by Title 42, a health ordinance implemented during the coronavirus pandemic.
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“In the seven months that the Biden Administration has run, we have documented more than 6,000 cases of abuse, assault and corruption.
Since most people do not make complaints to the authorities, we
believe that this is a minimal figure of what is happening at the border,
”explains Ana Ortega, a lawyer and researcher at Human Rights First, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. .
The report entitled
Human Rights Travesty: Biden Administration Embrace of Trump Asylum Expulsion Policy Endangers Lives, Wreaks Havoc
warns that almost 83% of asylum seekers who were returned to Mexico reported having suffered attacks or threats in the last month, according to the data. from the survey conducted from mid-June to mid-August 2021.
In the last two months, Human Rights First helped 69 people settled in Tijuana (Baja California) and Piedras Negras (Coahuila) to apply for a humanitarian visa.
62% (43 of 69 cases) reported having been kidnapped in Mexico,
and almost 19% (13 of 69) said they had suffered sexual assaults in those Mexican cities.
Central American migrants living in a makeshift camp in a public square in the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, July 2021. Reuters
["I suffered a lot". At the age of 13, he crossed the border to meet his mother again: he spent 4 months in shelters and tried to harm himself]
Last month, the number of migrants intercepted by US authorities after crossing the border with Mexico in an irregular manner
soared to more than 212,000 arrests
, a figure that exceeds all records of the last two decades.
In addition, the United States has begun using flights to expel Central American families and adults to southern Mexico, a measure that has been condemned by the United Nations.
Aggressions against minorities
Research data reveals that
89% of people from the LGBTQ + community who participated in the surveys were attacked
or received threats recently. Furthermore, analysis of data collected from mid-June to mid-August 2021 shows that nearly 20% of Haitian asylum seekers in the border region were victims of abuse by the police, including assaults such as beatings, extortion and intimidation.
A Honduran woman, a member of the LGBTQ + community, told investigators that she was raped and assaulted in Ciudad Acuña, a Mexican town on the border with Del Rio, Texas.
“He had a broken arm, and many bruises on his face and stomach.
Something that moved us a lot was that
she told us that she never imagined that the violence and discrimination from which she had been fleeing would accompany her to the border,
”says Ortega.
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The report accurately portrays the multiple dangers facing migrants in northern Mexico.
A Honduran man, who belongs to an indigenous people, reported that he was kidnapped and separated from his 5-year-old son after being expelled to Reynosa, Mexico.
A Salvadoran mother and her 7-year-old son were also kidnapped in Reynosa.
A Guatemalan migrant was raped in Ciudad Juárez, after the US authorities returned her
to that city with her 5-year-old daughter.
In each section of the investigation there are many complaints from migrants who were victims of cartels and other criminal groups in Mexican cities, in addition the researchers warn about the increase in the number of people living in makeshift camps in cities such as Tijuana, Matamoros and Reynosa , where a camp in the central square of the city houses thousands of migrants.
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At the end of June, the organization published a report in which they registered
3,300 violent incidents, so the new figure shows a 95% increase in these attacks.
The document is based on interviews with asylum seekers, surveys applied to migrants, press reports and information provided by lawyers and humanitarian aid groups.
The organization points out that the Mexican authorities do not act properly in the face of attacks against asylum seekers and migrants.
According to the researchers, the extensive control exercised by the cartels in vast swaths of the territory and the complicity of the Mexican authorities “evidence that US policies that force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico or require an initial exemption or other processing there country put migrants, lawyers and humanitarian groups at risk ”.
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Eunice Rendón, academic and international consultant on migration issues, did not participate in the research, but shares most of its findings.
“We are talking about people who are fleeing the risk of losing their lives, who suffer persecution and are in very complex situations but, as the report says, by applying Title 42 they are pushed into a more dangerous situation.
You deport them directly to danger, in some cases, to death
”, warns the expert.
Rendón has seen the effects of migrant returns closely because he studies the situation of the flows of people in regions such as Ciudad Juárez, which is why he warns about the human rights violations that these practices imply.
“Right now what is being experienced in the shelters in Ciudad Juárez is that
close to 20% of the returnees are infected with COVID-19.
Supposedly the US authorities test them, but the reality is that many are sent to Mexico infected, "warns the researcher.
Both the Interior Ministry and the Mexican National Migration Institute were contacted about the content of the report, but did not comment.
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'Stay in Mexico'
The investigation was released yesterday while the United States Supreme Court ruled against the legal recourse that the Government presented last week to suspend the order of a federal judge in Texas that demanded the reinstatement of the
Stay in Mexico
immigration program
.
This decision means that
US authorities will have to resume the practice of returning migrants seeking asylum at the border to Mexico,
while they wait for their cases to be processed in US immigration courts.
The president, Joe Biden, suspended the Migrant Protection Protocols (formal name of the program) during his first day in office, and the Department of Homeland Security assured that it would finalize it in June, according to court documents.
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Recently, more than 70 organizations from Mexico and the United States signed an open letter asking the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to oppose the reinstatement of that program.
It is estimated that more than 70,000 migrants (mostly Central Americans, but also Cubans, Venezuelans, and other nationalities) were returned to Mexico by the Trump administration during the implementation of this program in 2019.
“Like the Title 42 expulsion policy, the 'Stay in Mexico' program (…) cannot be carried out legally or humanely and will only increase the danger to those seeking safety in the United States.
That will lead to more kidnappings, assaults, torture and other violent attacks
, ”said Kennji Kizuka, associate director of research and analysis at Human Rights First.
For thousands of migrants, the border of Mexico and the United States is the prelude to their dreams.
In shelters, camps or from the street they look north where they hope to achieve the security and opportunities that their countries have denied them.
“I want to live in a place where I don't feel like my life is in danger.
Meanwhile I have to endure and be patient, ”says Pérez, the Venezuelan migrant who, for now, is in a shelter in Nuevo Laredo.
If you have complaints about the migratory situation in Mexico and Central America, you can write to albinson.linares@nbcuni.com