A migrant caravan tries to break through a National Guard fence in Chiapas, August 2021. Pedro Anza (CUARTOSCURO)
The use of the military to contain migrants—mostly Central Americans—crossing Mexico on their way to the United States has led to numerous documented human rights violations.
This is the main conclusion of the report published this Tuesday by the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic State of Law (FJEDD), to which EL PAÍS has had access.
The FJEDD has registered cases of illegal and arbitrary detentions;
sexual violence against women by state agents that "are not isolated cases, but, on the contrary, are increasingly common in control and verification processes";
the use of excessive violence;
the denial of medical help in cases of illness that has caused “the loss of lives, most of which have gone unpunished”;
illegal deportations,
"Mexico has opted for the implementation of a migration policy without a human rights approach," says the report.
"It makes use of the National Guard and other military bodies as a migration control apparatus, even when this goes against the regulations on migration and international human rights law," he continues.
“Migrants, particularly those in an irregular situation, are exposed to a series of risks, which eventually make them victims of crimes and human rights violations.
The great influence of the political and economic interests of the United States government has led to the assumption of a preponderant objective of containment, for which the Armed Forces have been resorted to a large extent,” the document concludes.
The report consists of 133 pages and was carried out between January 2021 and April 2022. It is extensively documented and supported by more than 100 interviews with migrants and members of the National Migration Institute (INM) and the National Guard (GN), in addition to of 144 government responses to requests for public information.
The FJEDD focuses the complaint, above all, on the National Guard, although it affirms that there has also been a "direct intervention of the Armed Forces in military control actions."
It also points to the placement of soldiers in positions of power within the INM, which has favored "the criminalization of groups of migrants, thereby accentuating their situation of vulnerability."
Mexico employs 28,397 soldiers to contain migration in places like Tapachula, a city that has become a kind of refugee camp: 35,000 migrants for a town of 300,000 inhabitants.
Of the contingent, 13,663 soldiers belong to the Army;
906 to the Navy and 13,828 to the GN, according to the Security Report of January 2022. They try to surround, often with violent charges, the migratory caravans, in which people travel together to try to reduce the risks of the dangerous road .
Since the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, came to power, security forces have detained 846,927 migrants, according to FJEDD calculations based on official figures.
The report represents a new setback to an already criticized migration strategy, both inside and outside the country.
Experts defend that this strategy does not work, that the only thing it achieves is to return migratory processes to the shadows: favoring human trafficking.
Practices that include the transfer of migrants inside trucks across the country without security measures, crowded into trailers.
55 people died in Chiapas last December when a vehicle that was transporting them in its box overturned.
Another pregnant Nicaraguan woman died this March, after being abandoned along with 250 other people in a truck at 40 degrees without water or ventilation.
The GN was created in 2019 by López Obrador.
It constitutes one of the main pillars of his political project.
In its original approach, it was a new body, born to combat the corruption that prevailed in predecessor organizations, such as the Federal Police, dissolved the same year that the GN began to function.
Although theoretically it is a civil organization, the formation of its agents is mainly military, as well as its structure.
In addition, it depends on the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, an institution that answers directly to the president.
“These are elements that show that it is actually an institution of a military nature,” defends the report.
According to the FJEDD,
The militarization of migration policies in Mexico is not a new process.
It began, as the report points out, during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).
It was continued by his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).
But it has been during the López Obrador administration that it has intensified.
At the time of its creation, the GN had 56,191 members;
three years later, their number has doubled: 113,883 agents, according to the Security Report.
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