Budget cuts exacerbate the migration crisis in Tapachula

A group of Haitian migrants protest in Tapachula, in Chiapas (Mexico) .Juan Manuel Blanco / EFE

Mountains of requests that accumulate, overflowing and insufficient staff, requests without response and saturated offices that take months and months to respond to the requests that arrive is the panorama faced by the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar), the office in charge of respond to the thousands of asylum seekers who are waiting for a solution to their procedures.

La Comar is overrun, since the allocated budget is not nearly enough to meet its needs. Despite the fact that requests have not stopped increasing, the budget allocated by the Ministry of the Interior has been reduced and in 2021 it will have 44 million pesos, three million less than the previous year. In contrast to the shortage of funds, from 2013 to August 2021, the number of refugee claims increased by 5,884%. So far this year alone, almost 77,600 applications have been submitted, surpassing the historical record of 70,405 in 2019, according to official figures from the agency itself. Only the entry of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has slightly mitigated the economic problem by contributing almost 53 million more,However, the figure is still far from meeting the needs, which are estimated at 200 million, to which is added the lack of doubling the staff to expedite the situation.

Currently for all of Mexico, Comar has about 170 people to which are added another 230 paid by UNHCR.

“We would need about 148 more people”, recognizes Andrés Ramírez, Comar coordinator.

The budget represents 2.8% of the total money handled by the National Migration Institute (INM), according to official data.

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• The trap of the southern capital

In 2013, refugee applications in Mexico were just over a hundred each month, currently around 8,000 per month, and the process has not been accompanied by a budget effort but by the same cuts that affect all secretaries. As a result of this policy, the city of Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, has seen its streets overflow in a few years with thousands of migrants waiting for a response. The increase corresponds mostly to Central Americans, but new migratory flows of Haitians, Cubans or Venezuelans have pushed the situation to the limit. For the first time, Haitians led requests for refugee status in Mexico.

Given the record numbers of refugee applicants, Comar is saturated, particularly its office in Tapachula, Chiapas, which concentrates more than 70% of all procedures. From here, up to four caravans of desperate migrants, tired of living in destitution, have left in recent days while they wait for an answer. The National Guard and the National Migration Institute launched operations to prevent their advance, during which the agents beat the foreigners. The refugee law states that the applicant must remain in the city where the procedure began until it is resolved, under penalty of losing the right to asylum.

The budgetary deficiencies are admitted even by the heads of the organism. To carry out a serious job requires six times more budget than that assigned for this year, recognizes in an interview with EL PAÍS Andrés Ramírez, head of the organization. "We had made a diagnosis of the needs and we would need around 130 million." "That is what we would need to do a professional job, but I am not going to be paralyzed and crying," admits this experienced official who has previously worked on missions in Bosnia and Rwanda with UNHCR.

“Migratory alternatives are needed such as giving them documents for free movement, temporary work permits or knowing that they are not going to be deported, in addition to increasing the budget, but since we have neither one nor the other, the situation has overflowed and we have this problem ”, explains Ramírez. "When Haitians arrive, they only see one way, which is to come to Comar and that has saturated the offices." "The Haitians who have arrived do not consider them refugees because they come from Chile and Brazil and they are collapsing the care service to the detriment of those who legitimately seek refuge," he added. According to his explanation, a refugee is a person who for reasons of persecution leaves their country of origin,"But they did not leave for this reason, but in search of better economic opportunities, that is why it is important that Mexico offer them immigration alternatives," he adds.

According to Eunice Rendón, coordinator of the Migrant Agenda organization, the humanitarian discourse towards migrants from the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not been accompanied by a budget to support it. “Before the covid-19 pandemic, the deadline for each procedure to be resolved was 45 days with an extension of another 45, but currently there is no limit. On several occasions, Comar has been forced to close its facilities due to coronavirus outbreaks, as applicants spend hours crowded outside the offices. Currently, if someone wants to apply for asylum, they receive an appointment for the month of January. Thousands of applicants for international protection have been abandoned in Tapachula for months, without documents and under threat of being detained in an immigration raid ”, explains Rendón.

"Logically, if you have a very strengthened operating capacity, because the (response) times are reduced, if the operating capacity is very precarious, very limited, obviously these times multiply", acknowledges Ramírez.

"There come times when we cannot meet the deadlines, because the rope is being stretched too much."

On the other hand, it warns that due to the agreement reached to receive Central Americans who request asylum in the United States, it is possible that several of these migrants abandon their process in the neighboring country and request refuge in Mexico.

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