How Mexican Cartels Manage the Flow of Migrants Heading to the US Border

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — The first place many migrants sleep after crossing into Mexico from Guatemala is in a large building, a roof over it and fenced sides on a rural farm. They call it the “chicken coop” and they can’t leave until they pay the cartel that runs it.

Encounters with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border have reached a four-year low, but migrants continue to pour into Mexico days before the U.S. election, in which immigration is a key issue.

While U.S. authorities give much of the credit to their Mexican counterparts for stemming the flow to their shared border, organized crime maintains tighter control over who moves here than the handful of federal agents and National Guard members who standing by the river.

Kidnapped migrants who pay a $100 ransom for their release are given a stamp to indicate they have paid. From January to August, more than 150,000 migrants were intercepted by immigration agents in this southernmost corner of Mexico, which is considered a fraction of the flow.

Six migrant families interviewed by The Associated Press, who had experienced a first kidnapping and been held until they paid, explained how it works. A Mexican federal official confirmed much of it. They all requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Mexican immigration agents encountered 925,000 undocumented migrants through August of this year, well above last year’s annual total and three times as many as in 2021. Yet they deported only 16,500, a fraction of previous years.

The Rev. Heyman Vazquez, a priest in Ciudad Hidalgo along the Suchiate River that divides Mexico and Guatemala, sees it every day.

“They (the cartel) decide who goes through and who doesn’t,” Vazquez said. “The numbers of migrants they take every day are large and they do this in the presence of the authorities.”

Pay to continue north

On Monday morning, Luis Alonso Valle, a 43-year-old Honduran traveling with his wife and two children, climbed off a raft lashed together with truck inner tubes and planks that had carried them across the Suchiate to Mexico.

They had gone less than fifty meters towards Ciudad Hidalgo when three men on a motorcycle approached to tell them they could not keep walking. When they saw journalists, they left. The family looked scared.

In the central square of Ciudad Hidalgo, Valle requested a van that could take them the 37 kilometers to Tapachula, considered the main entry point for southern Mexico. As he climbed aboard, the driver whispered asking whether journalists should stop recording. “They (organized crime) are going to stop me,” he said.

This is often how migrants arrive at the ranch. Taxi or van drivers who work for the cartel take them there and hand them over. They are forced to sleep on the floor.

“There were more than 500 people there, some had been there for 10 to 15 days,” said a Venezuelan woman who was released on Sunday with her husband and two children. “Those who don’t have money stay and those who decide to pay leave,” she said.

A 28-year-old baker from Ecuador was escorted to a bank to withdraw money to free himself, his wife, daughter and four other family members. His family was held as insurance until he returned.

Once payment is made, photos of the migrants are taken and their skin is stamped.

Armed men stop vans and taxis heading to Tapachula and check for stamps. Those without them are sent back. Migrants said that as soon as they arrived in Tapachula, they were told to wash up to avoid trouble with other gangs.

According to the non-governmental organization Fray Matias de Cordova in Tapachula, at least a third of the hundreds of migrants they have accompanied this year have arrived with a stamp. Director Enrique Vidal Olascoaga said those who cannot pay are often sexually abused.

None of the families interviewed by AP said they had suffered any harm.

The official with knowledge of migrants’ statements to investigators said that more than 100 migrants released by security forces in Ciudad Hidalgo in September, as well as a group of several dozen migrants shot at by soldiers on October 1, had crossed similar areas. kidnapping and extortion scenarios.

Cartel controlled border

The strict control of organized crime at Mexico’s southern border, combined with the increasing violence caused by the battle between the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. The state of Chiapas is just one of their battlegrounds, but it is crucial for controlling smuggling routes for people, drugs and weapons from Central America. According to experts, migrants have become the most lucrative commodity.

The increasingly aggressive presence of the cartels is becoming an obstacle for the organizations trying to help migrants. Earlier this month, gunmen killed an outspoken Catholic priest in Chiapas. And Vidal said the groups sometimes prevent the migrants from receiving humanitarian aid.

President Claudia Sheinbaum has said the government is tackling the violence but refusing to confront the cartels. She appears to be maintaining the tactic that began under former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration of cycling migrants from the north back to the south, depleting their resources and keeping them far from the U.S. border — exposing them to more kidnappings and extortion.

Ciudad Hidalgo Mayor Elmer Vazquez claimed to know nothing about safe houses for migrants in the area and said his city always takes care of migrants.

But Rev. Vazquez (no relation to the mayor), who has been defending migrants for 20 years, said the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National Guard, special prosecutor for crimes against migrants, does nothing even when crimes are reported.

“They collude with organized crime and of course make it look like they are doing their job,” he said.

Race against time

In August, the U.S. government expanded access to CBP One, an online portal used to schedule appointments to seek asylum at the border south of Chiapas. Mexico requested this measure to ease the pressure migrants felt to travel north for an appointment.

The Mexican government subsequently opened “mobility corridors” to help migrants with CBP One appointments travel safely from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. The appointments are just a first step, but most applicants will have to wait out the lengthy process from the US

But from September 9 to October 11, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said it transported only 846 migrants from Tapachula to the northern border. Others traveling alone have said they were extorted by Mexican authorities and kidnapped — again — by cartels near the northern border, forcing them to miss their appointments.

Donald Trump has said he would abolish CBP One and close other legal routes into the US

In Tapachula, hundreds of migrants with confirmed CBP One appointments waited outside Mexican Immigration offices on Tuesday for permits that would allow them to travel north.

Jeyson Uqueli, a 28-year-old Honduran, had slept outside the office to ensure he was first in line when it opened. He traveled alone but planned to reunite with his sister in New Orleans.

To have any chance of doing so, he would have to reach the border between Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico before November 6 for his CBP One appointment. He planned to fly from Tapachula to the northern city of Monterrey and then take a bus to Matamoros.

He was nervous about making it on time but was relieved to have the appointment, “because Donald Trump is going to come in and get rid of them,” he said.