By EFE
The Government of Mexico is preparing the opening of a new immigration station in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert, 72 kilometers south of Ciudad Juárez, in northern Mexico, reported the commissioner of the National Migration Institute Francisco Garduño.
The new center to retain migrants arises as an alternative almost a year after the fire at the Puente Lerdo facilities, in the border Ciudad Juárez, which left 40 migrants dead.
The station will be
located in the ruins of what was the internal customs of Juárez
, at kilometer 72 of the Pan-American highway, and which was abandoned since November 28, 2013, when the then president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) decided to eliminate several tax checkpoints parallel to the border with the United States.
[Latinos agree that there is a border crisis but differ with solutions proposed by non-Hispanics]
“We are in the process of integrating a shelter at kilometer 72, which was the checkpoint, to be able to have a space adapted for the habitation of migrants,” said Garduño, after his biweekly presentation before authorities for the judicial process that continues for his responsibility for the fire at the Ciudad Juárez immigration station in March 2023.
This seeks to compensate for a pending issue in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, which has been the epicenter of migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States and was left without an immigration station since March 2023 with the fateful fire.
During this time, the Migration Institute has had two stays for migrant families in Ciudad Juárez, one in the facilities of the Zaragoza International Crossing and a tent-shelter with capacity for 300 people was set up near the Lerdo-Stanton international crossing.
While the station that caught fire was in the center of the city, a few steps from the municipal presidency and a few meters from the Lerdo-Stanton intersection, these new planned facilities are located 72 kilometers from the city, in the middle of nowhere.
The abandoned facilities are located in the middle of the highway between Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, the capital of the state with the same name.
It has a 20-hectare property, a main building of 800 square meters of construction and which were previously customs offices.
In addition, there is a secondary building of about 350 square meters where personnel were housed and equipment was stored, as well as six sheds, where private and cargo vehicles waited for customs inspections.
EFE was able to document that the facilities are completely abandoned and vandalized, without furniture and they have even removed the wiring from the walls.
The Commissioner did not give more details about the adjustments that will need to be made to the old customs facilities and only indicated that they are looking for the company that will do the reconstruction.
“We are working on it, we are approving the company that is repairing it,” the Commissioner indicated about his progress.
Garduño said that the migratory flow that has occurred in recent years exceeds any forecast and any capacity of the current regulations.
“It is evident that the migratory flow is historically extraordinary, this phenomenon had not occurred in the world, 102 million migrants are walking in the world, 17 million on the American continent, 12 million migrants have passed through Mexico to the United States” , he concluded.