A thread for news stories about the ongoing global migrant crisis.
Should I stay or should I go? The dilemma for young Nigerians
Nigerian graduate Olotu Olanrewaju is facing a choice between remaining in the country he loves and the possibility of a better life elsewhere.
He adores the culture, food, music and family mentality at home, especially how people look out for each other and share common goals.
But the 24-year-old electrical engineer feels he is being held back professionally.
“I’m looking for greener pastures and better opportunities, rather than getting stuck here in Nigeria,” he tells the BBC’s What in the World podcast, adding that he thinks his degree would be “more appreciated” abroad.
There is also the feeling that the lack of reliable basic infrastructure - causing things like power cuts - as well as security concerns, corruption and poor governance, all create unnecessary barriers to getting on with life.
Mr Olanrewaju is one of tens of thousands of young, disenchanted Nigerians contemplating the move to join many others overseas. It’s a trend known by the Yoruba word “japa” meaning “to escape”.
The BBC contacted several government officials for a response to what he and other young Nigerians told us but has not received a reply.
The idea of emigrating from Nigeria is not new.
Since the 1980s, many middle-class Nigerians have sought economic opportunities abroad, but the scale and urgency now feels different and japa is becoming increasingly popular with Gen Z and millennials.
An African Polling Institute survey from 2022 found that 69% of Nigerians aged 18-35 would relocate given the opportunity - despite a slight fall from 2021. In 2019 the figure was just 39%.
On social media, young Nigerians have taken to posting about their japa experiences.
While some describe how they miss home, others show off the appeal of relocating, and encourage their peers to do the same.
But leaving is a pricey venture.
The rising cost of living, and the depreciation of the currency, the naira, has made an expensive process even harder - but also pushed more people to try to leave.
Many couples in troubled Venezuela are breaking up as people make plans to migrate ahead of election
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Victoria Estevez finally met someone who saw past her shyness. They spent two months learning about their likes and dislikes, texting about their families and friends, and walking around their hometowns on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. On a trip to the capital in December, they held each other for the first time.
I-like-yous followed, and by February, they were calling it a relationship.
And then came heartbreak.
“Remember I had told you that I have a brother in the Dominican Republic? Well, I am going to leave the country, too,” Estevez, 20, recalled reading in an early March WhatsApp message from her new boyfriend. He was the second guy in a row to blindside her with imminent plans to emigrate.
Nothing, not even love, has been spared the uncertainty that plagues everyday life in crisis-ridden Venezuela, which has seen several million people leave in the last decade or so. As a presidential election looms later this month along with questions about Venezuela’s future, many more are considering emigrating, wreaking havoc on the country’s economy, its politics and its dating scene.
Young people are debating online and among themselves whether it’s worth it to start a relationship — or whether to end one. Others are wondering when it is too soon or too late to ask the crucial question: Will you leave the country?
“How had he not told me that there was a possibility he would leave?” Estevez asked after she was crushed.
In a country rife with instability, dating is not spared
The last 11 years under President Nicolás Maduro have transformed Venezuela and Venezuelans.
In the 2000s, a windfall of hundreds of billions of oil dollars allowed then- President Hugo Chávez’s government to launch numerous initiatives, including providing ample public housing, free health clinics and education programs.
But a global drop in oil prices, government mismanagement and widespread corruption pushed the country into the political, social and economic crisis that has marked the entirety of his successor’s presidency: Decent paying jobs are rare. Water, electricity and other public services are unreliable. Food prices have skyrocketed.
The country that once welcomed Europeans fleeing war and Colombians escaping a bloody internal conflict has now seen more than 7.7 million people flee its shores.
The government faces its toughest test in decades in a July 28 election.
A nationwide poll conducted in April by the Venezuela-based research firm Delphos showed that roughly a fourth of people are thinking about emigrating. Of those, about 47% said a win by the opposition would make them stay and roughly the same amount indicated that an improved economy would keep them in their home country. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Accountant Pedro Requena has seen many a friend leave, but the news hit differently when the woman he had spent three “incredible” months dating in 2021 told him she was moving with her mom to Turkey. Requena, 26, was swooning over her, but he was committed to finishing his university degree and did not consider migrating.
With no guarantee she would ever return or he would ever be able travel across the world to see her, they still decided to give long-distance a try. They woke up early or went to bed late so that they could have video calls despite their seven-hour time difference. They watched movies and TV shows simultaneously. They texted and texted and texted.
“Venezuelans adapt to anything,” he said. “The crisis changes you.”
Indeed, Venezuelans adapted their diets when food shortages were widespread and again when groceries became available but unaffordable. They sold cars and switched to motorcycles or stopped driving, when lines at gas stations stretched kilometers (miles). They stocked up on candles when power outages became the norm. They used the U.S. dollar when the Venezuelan bolivar became worthless.
But that unpredictability is disastrous for forming lasting bonds.
“With the dating scenarios in Venezuela now, there’s like a certain built-in insecurity, or lack of safety, in the system because people don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Dr. Amir Levine, a psychiatrist and research professor at Columbia University. “The political instability actually introduces the instability into the relationship or into dating in general.”
A blow to self-confidence
Bumble, Tinder, Grindr and other dating apps are available in Venezuela, but education student Gabriel Ortiz has used a feature of the messaging app Telegram to connect with people near him. That is how he found a man in October with whom he exchanged messages for a month before they met up.
A few dates followed and by the time they headed off to spend Christmas and New Year with their families, the 18-year-old thought he might soon be able to call the guy his boyfriend.
They exchanged text and voice messages while apart. A plan to leave Venezuela never came up.
“He gives me the news that he is leaving for the United States,” Ortiz said of the WhatsApp messages he received in January.
It was a Sunday night. The man was leaving on Tuesday — and there wouldn’t even be time for a goodbye.
Ortiz tried to be supportive in the conversation. The tears came later.
He said he understands many people choose to leave because of the economic and political upheaval — but the unexpected news was a blow to his self-confidence.
“This fosters insecurities in you because you ask yourself questions like: Could it be that he didn’t like me enough to be honest with me from the beginning?” Ortiz said.
Levine, who co-authored the relationship book “Attached,” said that just as people should be blunt on dating profiles and first dates about their expectations for marriage and children, Venezuelans should talk about their migration plans. It is never too soon to ask.
“Let yourself ask the right questions and not believe that everything is going to work out,” he said.
Estevez learned that lesson the hard way. Caught off guard first by a guy who left her for Spain and now one who is moving to the Dominican Republic, she is very clear about what any future first date will look like.
“The first thing I’m going to ask is, ‘Are you going to leave the country?’” she said. “You can’t leave everything to fate! One has to say from the beginning, ‘Look, I’m leaving.’”
A disillusioned generation
For many of the young people fleeing Venezuela now, migration was not their first choice. First, they protested, standing on the front lines of massive anti-government demonstrations in 2017, when they were students.
The movement was met with repression and sometimes deadly force — and nothing changed: Maduro is still president, well paying jobs are nonexistent, and a car, a house and other symbols of adulthood did not materialize for this generation.
Now, instead of planning demonstrations, they spend their time planning one-way trips abroad.
Half of Kelybel Sivira’s graduating class from law school has left the country, worn out, as she put it, by devoting so much of themselves to the protests only to see that “the country simply moved on as if nothing happened.”
In turn, the dating pool for her generation shrank.
Sivira, a 29-year-old commercial lawyer, reconnected online with a former classmate in May 2021, after he had already emigrated to the U.S. with his family. Their friendly conversations turned romantic, and they began to consider a relationship toward the end of 2022.
They have not seen each other in person for years. They don’t know when they will even be able to hold hands. He lives in the U.S. illegally; her tourist visa was denied last year and her two applications for a special permit to enter the U.S. are pending approval. He is seriously considering returning to Venezuela in August regardless of the election outcome. She does not want that.
“I’m afraid that he will return to the country and say, ‘Venezuela, I still hate you. This is not what I want,’” Sivira said. “I don’t want to feel guilty.”
Sivira just earned a degree in actuarial science and thinks that may open up job opportunities in Spain or another country where the two could eventually move. But even with an outline of a plan, uncertainty persists.
Requena is also in a kind of limbo. Though he and his long-distance girlfriend decided to see other people after a year living on different continents, he still longs for the person he said was his perfect match.
“We keep in touch. The affection is always present,” he said. “It ended, but the future is uncertain, and even more so with this country.”
Ah yes, this is why I stopped coming to this side of the GWJ. Hopefully today will be a turning point in our long, dark way out of Chavismos Tyranny.
the great challenge for the left in the coming years is going to be wrenching right wing narrative dominance on the border and migration back towards some kind of decency while also dealing with record numbers of climate refugees
Panama starts returning migrants on US-funded flights
Panama on Tuesday started repatriating undocumented migrants on flights financed by the United States.
The move comes less than two months after José Raúl Mulino was sworn in as Panama's president.
Mr Mulino campaigned on a promise to "close" the Darién Gap, the dangerous stretch of jungle which more than half a million migrants crossed last year on their way north from South America.
The Biden administration said it had agreed to pay for the flights as part of its efforts to deter irregular migration.
A group of 29 Colombians with criminal records were the first to be returned on Tuesday.
Under an agreement jointly signed by the Panamanian foreign minister and US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the US has committed to helping Panama with $6m (£4.6m) for equipment, transportation and logistics to "remove foreign nationals who do not have a legal basis to remain in Panama".
Immigration is a hot topic ahead of November's presidential election in the US and the stream of migrants arriving at its border with Mexico is being closely monitored.
The agreement with Panama aims to drive down the number of people making it to the US border by stopping them further south.
The Darién Gap, an expanse of jungle which straddles Colombia and Panama, is a natural bottleneck for those heading from South to North America.
In 2023, an estimated 520,000 people made the perilous journey on foot, many of whom had to pay gangs who prey on those embarking on the crossing.
President Mulino, who has promised to reduce the number of migrants transiting through Panama, described their situation as "sad".
"Most of them are from Venezuela," he explained. "They're human beings... there are families torn apart, children of five or six years of age whose parents have died during the crossing. We don't even know who they are or what their names are."
The president had earlier said that the flights would in the first instance take migrants to Colombia, the country from which they entered Panama.
It is not yet clear if flights will be organised from Colombia to repatriate them to their homelands.
According to Panamanian government figures, Venezuelans form the largest share of migrants trekking through the Darién Gap, followed by Colombians, Ecuadoreans and Haitians.
There is widespread concern in the region that the flow of those fleeing Venezuela could increase in the months to come if the political crisis triggered by the announcement of disputed election results is not solved.
Ahead of the election, polls had suggested that large numbers of Venezuelans were planning on migrating should President Nicolás Maduro win.
Tension has been high since he was declared the winner by the government-dominated National Electoral Council, with the result being rejected as fraudulent by the opposition and questioned by the US, the EU and many Latin American countries.
Panamanian President Mulino earlier this month offered Mr Maduro "safe passage" so that the Venezuelan leader could leave to a third country, but his offer was rejected by Mr Maduro, who warned his Panamanian counterpart not to "mess" with Venezuela.
Well, today the "electioneering hall" of our SCOTUS equivalent deemed Nicolas Maduro's demand valid and agreed that he indeed won the last election, even thou, the National Electoral Center (CNE), a "power" itself with equal standing to the other 4 powers (In venezuela we have 5 of those, that end up being just one, cause, you know, dictatorship) had declared him the winner. So, to sum it up, Maduro introduced a demand to the Scotus demanding it to declare him the winner of the election he had already been declared the winner off, because as it's been already stablished, the CNE hasn't released the tallys, nor allowed the audits necessary to prove the tallys are legal to take place (and that are required by our laws)
So, even if we happen to oust Maduro, one way or the other, in the following months, expect a huge spike on migrants to occur in the short-mid term. I'm sure your ex-Cheerio in chief will moan and whine about it and distort it to attempt to win the next election.
It's crazy how the 2020 public was more pro-immigration than ever before, and the 2024 public is more anti-immigrant than at any time in the last 2 decades
There is nothing in the world that unites people faster than anti-new people sentiment.
Although I do think a lot of people associate visible poverty with immigration and crime. Plus, a lack of work permits and claims taking forever to process means refugees are functionally wards of the state, and no state has handled that, much less the optics of it, well.
A big problem there is that the states aren't permitted to attempt the things that could help them get a better handle on it. The simple and obvious solution is to allow asylum seekers to work sooner, but it's a federal law that they can't receive a work permit until 180 days after they have filed for asylum, so thats a huge potential solution that states aren't allowed to implement. There have been bills submitted to reduce that to 30 days, but they require a functioning government to pass. Plus, it's more beneficial to Republicans if the problem continues to get worse. A lot of the states that aren't deliberately being assholes to refugees already have a pretty good idea of what works, they just need more federal money fully fund them. But again, Republicans do not want to actually address it.
‘Barcelona or die.’ For Senegalese dreaming of Europe, the deadly Atlantic route is not a deterrent
THIAROYE-SUR-MER, Senegal (AP) — Salamba Ndiaye was 22 when she first tried to get to Spain, dreaming of a career as a real estate agent. Without her parents’ knowledge, she made it onto a small fishing boat known as a pirogue, but the Senegalese police intercepted the vessel before it could leave.
A year later Ndiaye tried again, successfully making it off the coast but this time a violent storm forced the boat to stop in Morocco, where Ndiaye and the other passengers were sent back to Senegal.
Despite her two failed attempts, the 28-year-old is determined to try again. “Right now, if they told me there was a boat going to Spain, I would leave this interview and get on it,” she said.
Ndiaye is one of thousands of young Senegalese who try to leave the West African country each year to head to Spain, fleeing poverty and the lack of job opportunities. Most head to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of West Africa, which is used as a stepping stone to continental Europe.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 22,300 people have landed on the Canary Islands, 126% more than the same period last year, according to statistics released by Spain’s Interior Ministry.
While most migrants leaving Senegal are young men, aid workers in the Canary Islands say they are increasingly seeing young women like Ndiaye risk their lives as well.
Earlier this year, the EU signed a 210 million euro deal with Mauritania to stop smugglers from launching boats for Spain. But the deal has had little effect on migrant arrivals for now.
The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will visit Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia this week to tackle irregular migration. The West African nations are the main launching pads for migrants traveling by boat.
The Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands is one of the deadliest in the world. While there is no accurate death toll because of the lack of information on departures from West Africa, the Spanish migrant rights group Walking Borders estimates the victims are in the thousands this year alone.
Migrant boats that get lost or run into problems often vanish in the Atlantic, with some drifting across the ocean for months until they are found in the Caribbean and Latin America carrying only human remains.
But the danger of the route is not a deterrent for those like Ndiaye, who are desperate to make a better living for themselves and their families in Europe. “Barsa wala Barsakh,” or “Barcelona or die” in Wolof, one of Senegal’s national languages, is a common motto of those who brave the deadly route.
“Even if we stay here, we are in danger,” said Cheikh Gueye, 46, a fisherman from Thiaroye-sur-Mer, the same village on the outskirts of Senegal’s capital that Ndiaye is from.
“If you are sick and you can’t pay for treatment, aren’t you in danger? So, we take our chances, either we get there, or we don’t,” he added.
Gueye also attempted to reach Europe though the Atlantic route but only made it to Morocco following bad weather, and was sent back to Senegal.
Like many inhabitants of Thiaroye-sur-Mer, he used to make a decent living as a fisherman before fish stocks started to deplete a decade ago due to overfishing.
“These big boats have changed things, before even kids could catch some fish here with a net,” Gueye said, pointing at the shallow water.
“Now we have to go more than 50 kilometers out before we find fish and even then we don’t find enough, just a little,” he adds.
Gueye and Ndiaye blame the fishing agreements between Senegal and the European Union and China, which allow foreign industrial trawlers to fish in Senegalese waters. The agreements impose limits on what they can haul in, but monitoring what the large boats from Europe, China and Russia harvest has proven difficult.
Ahead of the Spanish prime minister’s visit to Senegal on Wednesday, Ndiaye’s mother, Fatou Niang, 67, says the Senegalese and Spanish governments should focus on giving young people in the West African country job opportunities to deter them from migrating.
“These kids don’t know anything but the sea, and now the sea has nothing. If you do something for the youth, they won’t leave,” Niang says.
“But if not, well, we can’t make them stay. There’s no work here,” she said.
Abuse of migrants rampant at Louisiana Ice centers, report finds
Abuse of thousands of migrants at federal immigration detention centers in Louisiana is rampant, inhumane and meets the legal definition of torture, according to a report published on Monday by a coalition of human rights groups.
Accusations include the shackling of detainees for lengthy periods in painful positions, filthy drinking water, food contaminated by rat feces and served in meager portions, and a denial of or restricted access to medical and mental health treatment.
Additionally, the report alleges, women are routinely refused essential menstrual products, some restrained detainees were denied food, water, exercise or restroom facilities for more than 24 hours at a time and others were taunted, beaten or sexually assaulted by guards.
The allegations draw on interviews over a two-year period with more than 6,200 people held in nine Louisiana detention centers under the purview of the New Orleans immigration and customs enforcement field office (Nola Ice).
The report paints a damning picture of a miserable life in the facilities, eight of which are run by private contractors that have made substantial financial contributions for lobbying and to various politicians’ campaigns.
“These individuals have fled persecution and violence only to be thrown in ‘civil’ detention and left to fend for themselves in an abusive, profit-driven and manipulative system,” said Sarah Decker, staff attorney at Robert F Kennedy Human Rights and one of the report’s lead authors.
“We’ve heard horrific stories that have been corroborated by extensive documentation. Our findings further support what detained people and their advocates have long demanded. The Nola Ice jails must be shut down.”
In a statement to the Guardian on Monday, Ice ERO (enforcement and removal operations) said it was “firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody” and that a continual review of immigration centers nationally monitored “the quality of life and treatment of individuals among other factors relevant to the continued operation of each facility”.
Geo Group, one of the two companies named in the report, issued a strongly worded statement rejecting the findings.
“Geo categorically denies the claims being alleged by politically motivated groups who have a long history of making such claims for the purpose of ending immigration detention and stands by our provision of contract compliant support services in accordance with all established federal standards,” it said.
The 107-page report, entitled Inside the Black Hole: Systemic Human Rights Abuses Against Immigrants Detained and Disappeared in Louisiana, was authored by RFK Human Rights, state and national offices of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Immigration Project and Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy.
It notes that Louisiana is the second-largest state for immigration detention behind Texas – and that on any given day more than 6,000 people, comprising recently arrived asylum seekers as well as longer-term US residents from other countries, are in Ice custody there.
“Nola Ice officials operate immigration detention centers as punishing prisons designed to break the will and harm the mental wellbeing of detained people,” the report states.
“Officials rampantly violate human and civil rights, locking [detainees] in punitive conditions indistinguishable from those in criminal jails and prisons, in some cases for prolonged periods lasting years.
“In some instances, the abuses that detained people describe first-hand in this report meet the definitions of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment under international human rights treaties to which the US is a party.”
Many are forced to stay longer than they otherwise might because of communications issues and a denial of access to immigration lawyers or libraries at the facilities containing legal books, the report says.
“For years, we have been on the ground in Louisiana’s detention facilities, many of which are in isolated rural areas, conducting Know Your Rights presentations and providing legal assistance to as many individuals as we can,” said Andrew Perry, ACLU of Louisiana’s immigrant rights staff attorney.
“The conditions in these facilities are inhumane, as this report shows in heartbreaking detail. The federal government has turned immigration detention into a profit machine at the expense of both asylum seekers and longtime residents of the US. These facilities must be shut down.”
Along with physical and mental abuse, detainees at the facilities – mostly in northern Louisiana – recounted sleep deprivation and poor or nonexistent nutrition. Detainees at one institution say they were frequently woken at 3am for minuscule breakfast portions while others earning $1 a day for menial tasks found that a single bag of Doritos in the facility’s store was priced at $9.
“Immigration detention is lucrative, even more so when jails avoid providing basic services like suitable food and clothing,” the report states.
“To ensure maximum profits, Nola Ice jails are incentivized to cut costs by understaffing facilities, paying detained people subminimum wages for custodial and other labor services, and denying sufficient food, clothing, and medical care, among other abuses.”
The human rights groups detail what they call the “perverse financial incentives” of the two companies that operate eight of the state’s nine detention centers between them.
Geo Group, a Florida-based company, in February reported annual revenues of $2.41bn for 2023.
No contact details were listed on the website of the LaSalle Corrections, which says its 1,250 staff operate 18 correctional centers and other facilities in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Last year, the company was required to pay $7m to settle the case of a Texas woman whose family claimed she was denied water and medical care in one of its prisons – and that LaSalle staff falsified records after her death.
LaSalle, according to the report, “touts itself as a family-run business [that] does not publicly report its earnings”.
In its statement, Ice said: “The agency continuously reviews and enhances civil detention operations to ensure noncitizens are treated humanely, protected from harm, provided appropriate medical and mental health care, and receive the rights and protections to which they are entitled.
“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay. All people in Ice custody receive medical, dental and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering Ice custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.
“At no time during detention is a detained noncitizen denied emergent care.”
Two things:
1 - Clearly, this won't stop anyone. I've posted several articles here underlining that, when those migrants are saying "Europe or death," they genuinely mean it.
2 - I imagine this will mostly work the same way it's worked in Tunisia, where we find a fairly autocratic state and pay them quite well to beat the shit out of, imprison and deport discourage migrants. That's pretty much what happened with Tunisia.
Twelve die after migrant boat sinks in Channel
Six children and a pregnant woman were among 12 people who died after a boat carrying dozens of migrants sank off the French coast, in the English Channel.
In total, 10 of the dead were female and two were male, according to the local prosecutor's office.
More than 50 people were rescued off Cape Gris-Nez, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, the French coast guard reports. Two are said to be in critical condition.
Officials say the boat was overloaded and that its bottom "ripped open", while fewer than eight people on board were wearing life jackets.
The disaster is the deadliest loss of life in the Channel this year.
One source suggested a Syrian smuggler might have been involved.
Local prosecutor Guirec Le Bras said officials believed the victims had been "primarily of Eritrean origin" though they could not yet "specify the exact nationalities".
Before Tuesday's incident, 30 people had already died crossing the Channel in 2024 - the highest figure for any year since 2021, when 45 deaths were recorded, according to the UN's International Organisation for Migration.
Mr Darmanin said French authorities were preventing 60% of small boat departures. But people smugglers are cramming up to 70 people on vessels which used to carry 30 to 40 people - leading to deadlier shipwrecks.
He urged the UK and EU to agree a "treaty on migration" to curb small boat crossings.
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the incident as "horrifying and deeply tragic".
"The gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives have been cramming more and more people on to increasingly unseaworthy dinghies, and sending them out into the Channel even in very poor weather," she said.
The effort to "dismantle these dangerous and criminal smuggler gangs and to strengthen border security is so vital and must proceed apace", she added.
On the streets of a Colorado city, pregnant migrants struggle to survive
AURORA, Colo. (AP) — She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November.
Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son Dylan by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets she’d taken from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years.
First they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband had collected from begging on the street, they bought a tent.
They waited until dark to construct their new home. They chose a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population.
“We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.”
That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son’s to keep him warm enough that he could sleep, Ivanni Herrera cried.
Seeking better lives, finding something else
Over the past two years, a record number of families from Venezuela have come to the United States seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling with conflict about how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all.Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some are homeless and gambling on the kindness of strangers to survive. Some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant.
Like many in her generation, regardless of nationality, Herrera found inspiration for her life’s ambitions on social media. Back in Ecuador, where she had fled years earlier to escape the economic collapse in her native Venezuela, Herrera and her husband were emboldened by images of families like theirs hiking across the infamous Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama. If all those people could do it, they thought, so can we.
They didn’t know many people who had moved to the United States, but pictures and videos of Venezuelans on Facebook and TikTok showed young, smiling families in nice clothes standing in front of new cars boasting of beautiful new lives. U.S. Border Patrol reports show Herrera and the people who inspired her were part of an unprecedented mass migration of Venezuelans to America. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the southern border since October 2022 — more than in the previous nine years combined.
Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real. She and her friends had developed another theory: The hype around the U.S. was part of some red de engaño, or network of deception.
After several days of camping on the street and relieving herself outside, Herrera began to itch uncontrollably with an infection. She worried: Would it imperil her baby?
She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.
Days after she was forced to leave the Microtel, Denver paused its policy and allowed homeless immigrants to stay in its shelters through the winter. Denver officials say they visited encampments to urge homeless migrants to come back inside. But they didn’t venture outside the city limits to Aurora.
As Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, on Denver’s eastern edge, is a place where officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.
In fact, former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.
The doctors treated Herrera’s yeast infection and urged her to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid, a program that extends the health care benefits for poor American families to unauthorized immigrants for labor and delivery.
Herrera refused.
“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”
Another family, cast out into the night
It was March when David Jaimez, his pregnant wife and their two daughters were evicted from their Aurora apartment. Desperate for help, they dragged their possessions into Thursday evening Bible study at Jesus on Colfax, a church and food pantry inside an old motel. Its namesake and location, Colfax Avenue, has long been a destination for the drug-addicted, homeless veterans and new immigrants.
When the Jaimez family arrived, the prayers paused. The manager addressed the family in elementary Spanish, supplementing with Google Translate on her phone.
After arriving from Venezuela in August and staying in a Denver-sponsored hotel room, they’d moved into an apartment in Aurora. Housing is cheaper in that eastern suburb, but they never found enough work to pay their rent. “I owe $8,000,” Jaimez said, his eyes wide. “Supposedly there’s work here. I don’t believe it.”
Jaimez and his wife are eligible to apply for asylum or for “ Temporary Protected Status ” and, with that, work permits. But doing so would require an attorney or advisor, months of waiting and $500 in fees each.
At the prayer group, Jaimez’s daughters drank sodas and ate tangerines from one participant, a middle-aged woman and Aurora native. She stroked the ponytail of the family’s 8-year-old daughter as the young girl smiled.
When the leader couldn’t find anywhere for the family to stay, they headed out into the evening, pushing their year-old daughter in her stroller and lugging a suitcase behind them. After they left, the middle-aged woman leaned forward in her folding chair and said: “It’s kind of crazy that our city lets them in but does not help our veterans.” Nearby, a man nodded in agreement.
That night, Jaimez and his family found an encampment for migrants run by a Denver nonprofit called All Souls and moved into tent number 28. Volunteers and staff brought in water, meals and other resources. Weeks later, the family was on the move again: Camping without a permit is illegal in Denver, and the city closed down the encampment. All Souls re-established it in six different locations but closed it permanently in May.
At its peak, nearly 100 people were living in the encampment. About half had been evicted from apartments hastily arranged before their shelter time expired, said founder Candice Marley. Twenty-two residents were children and five women were pregnant, including Jaimez’s wife. Marley is trying to get a permit for another encampment, but the permit would only allow people over 18.
“Even though there are lots of kids living on the street, they don’t want them all together in a camp,” Marley said. “That’s not a good public image for them.”
A city’s efforts, not enough
Denver officials say they won’t tolerate children sleeping on the street. “Did you really walk from Venezuela to be homeless in the U.S.? I don’t think so,” said Jon Ewing, spokesman for Denver’s health and human services department. “We can do better than that.”
Still, Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city.
Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But in May, on pace to spend $180 million this year helping newcomers, the city scaled back its offer to future migrants while deepening its investment in people already getting help.
Denver paid for longer shelter stays for 800 migrants already in hotels and offered them English classes and help applying for asylum and work permits. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora.
Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area, but Marley still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. “It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” she said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.”
After the encampment closed, Jaimez and his family moved into a hotel. He paid by holding a cardboard sign at an intersection and begging for money. Their daughter only attended school for one month last year, since they never felt confident that they were settled anywhere more than a few weeks. The family recently moved to a farm outside of the Denver area, where they’ve been told they can live in exchange for working.
On the front lines of begging
When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she was sitting on the grass, resting after a long day asking strangers for money. She waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance.
The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together.
Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She brought him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s.
Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month.
To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from something else: standing outside with their children and begging.
Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don’t have the money.
One spring weekday, Herrera and Rodriguez stand by the shopping carts at the entrance to a Mexican grocery store. While their sons crawl along a chain of red shopping carts stacked together and baby Milan sleeps in his stroller, they try to make eye contact with shoppers.
Some ignore them. Others stuff bills in their hands. On a good day, each earns about $50.
It comes easier for Rodriguez, who’s naturally boisterous. “One day a man came up and gave me this iPhone. It’s new,” she says, waving the device in the air.
“Check out this body,” she says as she spins around, laughing and showing off her ample bottom. “I think he likes me.”
Herrera grimaces. She won’t flirt like her friend does. She picks up Milan and notices his diaper is soaked, then returns him to the stroller. She has run out of diapers.
Milan was sick, but Herrera has been afraid to take him to the doctor. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, she was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says.
But some days, when she’s feeling overwhelmed, she wants to be deported — as long as she can take her children along. Like the day in May when the security guard at the Mexican grocery store chased off the women and told them they couldn’t beg there anymore. “He insulted us and called us awful names,” Rodriguez says.
The two women now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door.
The American Dream, still out of reach
In the garage where Herrera and her family live, the walls are lined with stuffed animals people have given her and her son. Baby Milan, on the floor, pushes himself up to look around. Dylan sleeps in bed.
Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the months-long trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work.
“I don’t feel equipped to handle all of this on my own,” she says.
The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.”
When her daughter calls in the middle of the day, she’s sure not to answer and only picks up after 6 p.m. “They think I’m doing so well, they expect me to send money,” she says. And Herrera has complied, sending $100 a week to help her sister pay rent and buy food for her daughter.
Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to the U.S., her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600.
She has to come clean. She doesn’t have the money. She lives day to day. The American Dream hasn’t happened for Ivanni Herrera — at least, not yet. Life is far more difficult than she has let on.
She texts back:
No.
The brutal truth behind Italy’s migrant reduction: beatings and rape by EU-funded forces in Tunisia
When she saw them, lined up at the road checkpoint, Marie sensed the situation might turn ugly. Four officers, each wearing the combat green of Tunisia’s national guard. They asked to look inside her bag.
“There was nothing, just some clothes.” For weeks Marie had traversed the Sahara, travelling 3,000 miles from home. Now, minutes from her destination – the north coast of Africa – she feared she might not make it.
An armed officer lunged towards her. Another grabbed her from behind, hoisting her into the air. By the road, on the outskirts of the Tunisian city of Sfax, the 22-year-old was sexually assaulted in broad daylight.
“It was clear they were going to rape me,” says the Ivorian, her voice wobbling.
Her screams saved her, alerting a group of passing Sudanese refugees. Her attackers retreated to a patrol car.
Marie knows she was lucky. According to Yasmine, who set up a healthcare organisation in Sfax, hundreds of sub-Saharan migrant women have been raped by Tunisian security forces over the past 18 months.
“We’ve had so many cases of violent rape and torture by the police,” she says.
Marie, from the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan, knows others who describe rape by Tunisia’s national guard. “We’re being raped in large numbers; they [the national guard] take everything from us.”
After the attack, Marie headed to a makeshift camp in olive groves near El Amra, a town north of Sfax. Migration experts say that tens of thousands of sub-Saharan refugees and migrants, encircled by police, are now living here. Conditions are described as “horrific”.
Humanitarian organisations, aid agencies, even the UN, are unable to access the camp.
What happened to Marie in May has relevance beyond her continent: her attackers belong to a police force directly funded by Europe.
Her account – along with further testimony gathered by the Guardian – indicates that the EU is funding security forces committing widespread sexual violence against vulnerable women, the most egregious allegations yet to taint last year’s contentious agreement between Brussels and Tunis to prevent migrants reaching Europe.
That agreement saw the EU pledge £89m migration-related funding to Tunisia. Large sums, according to internal documents, appear to have gone to the national guard.
The pact vows to combat migrant smugglers. A Guardian investigation, however, alleges national guard officers are colluding with smugglers to arrange migrant boat trips.
The deal also pledges “respect for human rights”. Yet smugglers and migrants reveal that the national guard is routinely robbing, beating and abandoning women and children in the desert without food or water.
Senior Brussels sources admit the EU is “aware” of the abuse allegations engulfing Tunisia’s security forces but is turning a blind eye in its desperation, led by Italy, to outsource Europe’s southern border to Africa.
In fact there are plans to send more money to Tunisia than publicly admitted.
Despite mounting human rights concerns, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, prompted dismay on Monday by expressing interest in the model of paying Tunisia to stop people reaching Europe.
During a meeting in Rome with his rightwing counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, Starmer admired how the pact had prompted a “dramatic” reduction in numbers reaching Italy.
By contrast, the number of refugees and migrants near El Amra continues to grow. One migration observer in Sfax estimates there may be at least 100,000, a number that some feel Tunisia’s increasingly autocratic president, Kais Saied, is deliberately cultivating as a threat to Europe: keep the money coming, or else.
“If Europe stops sending money, he’ll send Europe the migrants. Simple,” says the expert, requesting anonymity.
It is a predicament that provokes questions around Europe’s willingness to ditch commitments to human rights to stymie migration from the global south. And how much abuse of migrants such as Marie is Brussels prepared to overlook before re-examining payments to Saied?
One day along the Texas-Mexico border shows that realities shift more rapidly than rhetoric
As midnight nears, the lights of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, fill the sky on the silent banks of the Rio Grande. A few months ago, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire from Juarez into El Paso.
No one is waiting there now.
Nearly 500 miles away, in the border city of Eagle Pass, large groups of migrants that were once commonplace are rarely seen on the riverbanks these days.
In McAllen, at the other end of the Texas border, two Border Patrol agents scan fields for five hours without encountering a single migrant.
It’s a return to relative calm after an unprecedented surge of immigrants through the southern border in recent years. But no one would know that listening to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talking about border enforcement at dueling presidential campaign events. And no one would know from the rate at which Texas is spending on a border crackdown called Operation Lone Star – $11 billion since 2021.
Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other elected officials often refer to the country’s “open border” with Mexico. Immigration is a top issue in the presidential election, and most American voters say it should be reduced.
But conditions on the border often shift more rapidly than political rhetoric. Arrests for illegal crossings plummeted nearly 80% from December to July. Summer heat typically reduces migration, but on top of that Mexican authorities sharply increased enforcement within their borders in December. Plus, President Joe Biden introduced major asylum restrictions in June.
Crossings are still high by historical standards and record numbers of forcibly displaced people worldwide — more than 117 million at the end of last year, according to the U.N. refugee agency — may make the drop temporary. And some Republican critics say Biden’s new and expanded legal pathways to enter the U.S. are “a shell game” to reduce illegal crossings — along with the chaotic images and headlines they spawn — while still allowing people in.
The Texas Tribune and The Associated Press spent 24 hours in five cities on Texas’ 1,254-mile border with Mexico to compare rhetoric with reality.
Kamala Harris goes on offensive with 'tough on border' message
US Vice-President Kamala Harris has made a rare trip to the US-Mexico border as she seeks to blunt Republican attacks on immigration.
Harris, who last visited the border in 2021, accused Donald Trump of being focused on "scapegoating instead of solutions" and "rhetoric instead of results".
Earlier on Friday, the Republican nominee argued Harris was "getting killed" on the issue and supports "the worst bill ever drawn" on border security.
Polls suggest more Americans trust Trump over Harris on handling the border and illegal immigration.
Cochise County, a conservative stronghold in Arizona that became a hot spot for record-high border crossings last autumn, provided a backdrop for the Democratic nominee to inspect the border wall, speak with local officials and project a message of toughness.
She claimed Trump "did nothing to fix our broken immigration system" as president, adding that Republicans were trying to force a "false choice" between border security and a "safe, orderly and humane" immigration system.
"We can and must do both," she told supporters at a campaign event in Douglas.
Harris vowed to further toughen asylum laws enacted earlier this year by President Joe Biden and to revive a bipartisan border security measure Trump helped block.
But Jim Chilton, a local rancher, said he has "seen the evidence" of what Harris would do in power.
"I've watched her and President Biden," he told the BBC. "We've had an open border policy. We now are understanding what that really means.”
Every year, thousands of undocumented migrants walk through Mr Chilton's 50,000-acre ranch just south of Arivaca.
He has motion-activated cameras that show the procession of people, all dressed in near-identical camouflage, across his land. He is convinced drug dealers and gang members are among them.
Menacing signs threaten trespassers with death, but Mr Chilton has also installed drinking fountains so nobody dies making the hazardous journey.
Three corpses were found on his land last year.
A Trump supporter, Mr Chilton does not believe Harris will crack down on the flow of migrants.
“She's changing her mind just to get votes and lie to us. It's outrageous," he said.
Concerns over stemming the influx are ever present in tiny border towns like Douglas.
Homeowners here can see through miles of border fencing into Mexico when they step out onto their front porches.
One woman said her neighbours built brick walls around their homes to keep migrants from hiding out in their backyards.
Even some Democrats here who are voting for Harris said they preferred Trump's border approach and felt safer during his tenure.
Last year, a handful of churches and the town's visitor centre transformed overnight into makeshift shelters to house newcomers.
Since then, the Biden administration has enacted tougher restrictions on seeking asylum and migrant crossings have plunged to four-year lows.
Gail Kochorek is a dedicated volunteer who drives down to the wall to hand out food and water to people on the Mexican side, usually waiting until after dark to cross back into the US.
To her, the political approach to immigration is increasingly dehumanising to people hoping to making a better life in her country.
She is disappointed to hear Harris promising to crack down on migrants but, given a choice between her and Trump, the Democrat can count on Ms Kochorek's vote.
Laughing at Trump's pledges to secure the border, she showed the BBC gaps in Trump's wall and where people could cut through the steel fencing.
The former president has vowed to seal the border by completing construction of the barrier, increasing enforcement and implementing the largest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history.
But earlier this year, he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party border bill that was endorsed by Biden and Harris.
"That's the worst bill ever drawn. It's a waste of paper," Trump told supporters earlier on Friday at a rally in Walker, in the swing state of Michigan.
Denying that he lobbied congressional allies to tank the piece of legislation, Trump claimed Harris "want to see if she could salvage it and make up some lies".
"She went to the border today because she's getting killed on the border," he said.
In a statement following Harris's event, the Trump campaign characterised the visit as a "drop-in" and "photo op".
The border crisis has been a major vulnerability for Harris.
As vice-president, she has not directly shaped border policy but was put in charge of addressing the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
Her efforts targeted systemic issues like poverty, corruption, and violence, which for years have driven large numbers of people from these regions to make the treacherous journey to the United States.
It is too soon to tell if the two-part strategy - bolstering democratic institutions and coaxing business leaders to invest in the region - is working, but Harris has taken a lot of blame for upward trends in migration.
As a candidate, she has highlighted her experience as a prosecutor when she was attorney general of California, particularly in investigating transnational and cartel organisations, to emphasise her approach to tackling immigration-related challenges.
Her recent remarks have aligned closely with Biden's emphasis on border security and law enforcement, but also reflect how the politics of the issue have shifted notably to the right.
As she seeks to convince voters that she has a plan, her biggest challenge is finding an approach that balances the legal and humanitarian aspects of the immigration system.
Wrong thread
Biden administration doubles down on tough asylum restrictions at border
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Monday it is making asylum restrictions at the southern border even tougher, as it’s increasingly eager to show voters uneasy over immigration that it is taking a hard stance on border security.
The new rules, which toughen restrictions announced in June, bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed.
Under the previous rules, the U.S. could restrict asylum access when the number of migrants trying to enter the country between the official border crossings hit 2,500 per day. The daily numbers had to average below 1,500 per day for a week in order for the restrictions to be lifted.
The version rolled out Monday says the daily numbers will have to be below 1,500 for nearly a month before the restrictions can be lifted. And the administration is now counting all children toward that number, whereas previously only migrant children from Mexico were counted.
These changes, which go into effect on Tuesday, will make it much more difficult to lift the restrictions and allow people entering the country between the official border crossings eventually to apply for asylum in the U.S.
But the restrictions implemented in June have never been lifted because the numbers of border encounters have never gotten low enough for long enough, raising the question of why the administration felt the need to make them even tougher now. The seven-day average has gotten down to about 1,800 migrant encounters per day, the Department of Homeland Security said.
A senior administration official said Monday that the longer timeline was necessary to make sure that drops in immigration are sustained and not due to a one-time event. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to brief reporters about the tighter restrictions before they were made public.
Immigration advocates already had harshly criticized the restrictions announced in June, saying the administration was slashing away at vital protections for people fleeing persecution.
The administration has touted its asylum restrictions, saying they have led to serious drops in the number of migrants coming to the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that since the changes were announced in June, the daily number of people encountered by Border Patrol between the legal border crossings has fallen over 50%.
In a statement announcing the new rules, DHS called on Congress to do more to solve immigration problems.
Border security and immigration are a key weakness for the Biden administration and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and others from his party have hammered away at the high numbers of migrants who’ve come to the southern border under the Biden administration, saying the White House and Harris haven’t done enough to restrict migration and secure the border.
Harris visited a border region of Arizona on Friday, her first visit as the Democratic nominee. She walked along the tall metal fence separating the U.S. from Mexico and called for a tightening of asylum rules while pushing for a better way to welcome immigrants legally.
6 migrants shot dead near Guatemalan border when Mexican army troops open fire
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican army troops opened fire on a truck carrying migrants from a half dozen countries, and six migrants from Egypt, Peru and El Salvador died in an event that President Claudia Sheinbaum described Thursday as “deplorable.”
Ten other migrants were wounded in the shooting. Sheinbaum did not say how many migrants from each country had been killed, and Mexico’s foreign relations department was not immediately able to provide details.
Peru’s Foreign Ministry confirmed one Peruvian was killed and demanded “an urgent investigation” into the killings. The two countries have had damaged relations since a 2022 diplomatic spat.
Sheinbaum said the two soldiers who opened fire on Tuesday, her first day in office, had been turned over to civilian prosecutors for questioning, but apparently had not yet been charged. It was the worst killing of migrants by authorities in Mexico since police in the northern state of Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants in 2021.
She said the shootings were being investigated to see if any commanders might face punishment, and noted “a situation like this cannot be repeated.”
But she left out any mention of that later Thursday at massive at a Mexico City army base, where army and navy commanders pledged their loyalty to her in front of massed combat vehicles and hundreds of troops.
“In our country, there is not a state of siege, there are no violations of human rights,” Sheinbaum said, as she promised wage increases for soldiers and sailors.
The shootings Tuesday occurred near the town of Huixtla, in the southern state of Chiapas near the border with Guatemala, Mexico’s Defense Department said Wednesday in a statement.
The department said that soldiers claimed they heard shots as a convoy of three trucks approached the soldiers’ position. In a somewhat confused account, the department said the first vehicle in a three-truck convoy appeared to speed away from soldiers.
Two soldiers fired on another of the trucks, which was also carrying migrants from Nepal, Cuba, India, Pakistan and at least one other country. Soldiers then approached the truck and found four of the migrants dead, and 12 wounded. Two of the wounded later died of their injuries.
Local prosecutors confirmed all the victims died of gunshot wounds. The Defense Department did not say whether the migrants died as a result of army fire, and Sheinbaum refused to say whether any weapons were found in the migrants’ truck.
There were 17 other migrants in the truck who were unharmed. The vehicle was carrying a total of 33 migrants. The area is a common route for smuggling migrants, who are often packed into crowded freight trucks. It has also been the scene of drug cartel turf battles, and the department said the trucks “were similar to those used by criminal groups in the region.”
The two soldiers who opened fire were also relieved of duty pending investigations. In Mexico, any incident involving civilians is subject to civilian prosecution, but soldiers can also face court-martial for those offenses.
Irineo Mujica, a migrant rights activist who has frequently accompanied caravans of migrants in that area of Chiapas, said he doubted the migrants or their smugglers opened fire.
“It is really impossible that these people would have been shooting at the army,” Mujica said. “Most of the time, they get through by paying bribes.”
The Roman Catholic Mexican Council of Bishops called the killings “a disproportionate use of lethal force,” and said in a statement that “this tragedy is not an isolated incident.”
“Rather, it is the consequence of militarization of immigration policy, and the greater presence of armed forces on the country’s southern border,” it said.
If the deaths were the result of army fire, as appears likely, it could prove a major embarrassment for Sheinbaum.
The new president has followed the lead of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in giving the armed forces extraordinary powers in law enforcement, state-run companies , airports, trains and construction projects.
It is not the first time Mexican forces have opened fire on vehicles carrying migrants in the area, which is also the object of turf battles between warring drug cartels.
In 2021, the quasi-military National Guard opened fire on a pickup truck carrying migrants, killing one and wounding four. The Guard officers initially claimed some of those in the migrants’ truck were armed and had fired shots, but the governmental National Human Rights Commission later found that was not true.
And in 2021, state police in Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants and two Mexican citizens. Those officers also initially claimed to have come under fire from the migrants’ vehicles.
They initially argued they were responding to shots fired and believed they were chasing the vehicles of one of the country’s drug cartels, which frequently participate in migrant smuggling. But that later turned out to be false, and the police in fact burned the victims’ bodies in an attempt to cover up the crime.
Eleven of the policemen were convicted of homicide and sentenced to over 50 years in prison.
Pages