Los Invisibles: Nuances of Migration Along Mexico's Southern Border
Part 7 in a Series
TAPACHULA, MEXICO – It has been more than one year since Jaime Amilcar Deras Cotto, 43, was held at the Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI immigration center in Tapachula, a city in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. Still, the 43-year-old Salvadoran man has vivid and unpleasant memories of the month and a half he spent there.
“I got sick to my stomach from the meals they provide – food with iodine and without salt,” Deras says.
Authorities took him into custody during his third attempt to cross Mexico illegally in order to reach the U.S. They held him in one of Mexico’s 32 immigration centers, where migrants who are in the country without legal permission must stay while officials regularize their immigration status or process them for repatriation.
Deras received a medical checkup when he arrived at the center, he says. But he did not receive legal assistance, a right under Mexican law.
The migrants slept on cement floors in poorly ventilated rooms that were hot and full of mosquitoes, Deras says, sitting on the back patio of the Albergue Jesús el Buen Pastor del Pobre y el Migrante, a migrant shelter in Tapachula. They bathed in dirty, fungus-filled areas.
Immigration center staff also treated Central American migrants differently than the European, Haitian, Indian and Cuban migrants there, Deras says.
After reviewing Deras’ case, officials sent him back to El Salvador. As he now makes his fourth attempt to get to the U.S., his days at the immigration center remain fresh in his mind.
The government inaugurated the center’s current facilities in 2006. At the ceremony, then-President Vicente Fox said the new center was a “model facility” with the space, qualified personnel and equipment to treat migrants in a dignified, respectful manner.
But human and migrants’ rights groups say conditions at the center are inadequate – assertions that immigration authorities reject. Organizations monitoring other Mexican immigration centers have also documented unsatisfactory conditions, even though they have improved in some cases. The larger debate is the legality of the centers. As migrant advocates say detaining migrants who entered the country illegally punishes them for a minor administrative offense, authorities maintain that they provide lodging for migrants’ own security while they process their cases.
Home to three of the country’s full immigration centers plus eight temporary holding centers, Chiapas is the state with the largest number of foreigners who entered the country illegally in custody. In 2012 and the first nine months of 2013, Chiapas held 46.5 percent of the inhabitants of Mexico’s immigration centers, according to statistics from the National Institute of Migration, the country’s federal migration authority.
The immigration center that holds the most migrants in the state is the Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI, which is located at the local office of the National Institute of Migration. The center has a capacity of 940 people but is often overcrowded, say Héctor Sipac, the Guatemalan consul in Tapachula and Luis Perdomo Vidal, the Salvadoran vice consul there.
Of the 67,568 foreigners in custody between January and September 2013, the government repatriated 94 percent, according to the National Institute of Migration.
The press may not enter immigration centers, say two representatives of the National Institute of Migration, who denied multiple requests by Global Press Journal to enter Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI.
But migrants’ rights groups say conditions at the center are inhumane. Immigration authorities reject this assertion.
Since the center’s inauguration, a civil organization in Tapachula dedicated to defending the human rights of migrants in southern Mexico – Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova – has been monitoring it.
In the organization’s most recent report, published in March 2013, it characterized the immigration center’s physical conditions as inadequate and failing to respect the rights of the migrants held there. It based the report on visits to the immigration center and interviews with its inhabitants.
Under Mexican law, migrants held in immigration centers have the right to a decent space, quality food, basic hygiene supplies, as well as medical, psychological and legal assistance. They also must be informed of their rights and the reason for their holding.
But the human rights organization’s report signaled numerous shortcomings at the immigration center in Tapachula. Among them are poorly ventilated rooms, which, instead of windows, have small slits in the walls. Bars, similar to those in jails, also enclose the habitations.
Many of the migrants interviewed for the report cited receiving dirty sheets and sleeping mats. Some complained that they received only a piece of soap to keep themselves clean and did not have privacy to bathe or to use the toilet. Staff did not distribute diapers and sanitary pads to those who needed them.
Migrants also reported that staff served food that was flavorless and not cooked. On some occasions, they received the same food three times per day. Those who required specialized meals – such as children under the age of 6, pregnant woman and nursing mothers – did not receive them.
Many of the migrants interviewed said they did not receive a medical exam upon entering the immigration center, as the law requires, according to the report. Medical staff prescribed those suffering physical illnesses the same pill in all cases.
The center staff did not inform migrants about their rights or even tell them why they were being held, according to the report. As officials processed migrants’ cases, they made statements without legal representation and signed documents without knowing what they meant.
The report also described the practice of punishing migrants by locking them in a room that the migrants called “el calabozo,” which translates from Spanish to “the dungeon.”
Asked to respond to this criticism in July, José Luis Valles López, the National Institute of Migration’s delegate in Chiapas at the time, wholly rejected findings of the human rights organization’s report. Center officials treat migrants in a professional manner, he said.
“Daily, I see how they are fed and how there is medical staff there 24 hours a day for any eventuality that presents itself,” he said.
The center has separate units for men, minors and families with bathrooms and sleeping mats, he said. If anyone needs a blanket, they get one. Staff members lock rooms only at night to keep migrants safe.
“When the people go in to sleep, these rooms inside certainly are locked for reasons of security of the people who are lodged there,” he said.
López also denied that “the dungeon” existed.
“I do not know from where they have the report that there are punishment cells,” he said.
López left his job in August 2013. His successor, Jordán de Jesús Alegría Orantes, did not respond to numerous interview requests.
Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI is not the only immigration center that has drawn criticism in Mexico. Migrant rights advocates and human rights groups have also documented poor conditions in other immigration centers across the country, even though they have improved in some cases.
The Mexican government’s own National Commission of Human Rights published a report in 2005 on conditions in immigration centers nationwide that described deficient medical services, infrastructure, hygiene, lighting and ventilation, as well as problems with food and overcrowding. The report also found that the centers often failed to inform the appropriate consulates when Mexican officials detained people from their countries.
Since then, other organizations have seen some improvement in certain aspects. But they note that other problems persist.
Physical conditions have improved during the decade Sin Fronteras, a civil organization, has been monitoring immigration centers in Tapachula, Mexico City and Tenosique, including Estación Migratoria Siglo XXI, says Diana Martínez Medrano, who coordinates the organization’s assistance and services program. The organization is dedicated to protecting and defending the rights of migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees.
But problems related to food and crowding persist, Martínez says. There are also deficiencies in legal attention. In some cases, migrants do not have access to lawyers, their case files, or information about why the officials took them into custody or how long the process will take.
This can negatively affect the emotional health of migrants, particularly those who fled their countries to escape violence, Martínez says.
“We see people who arrive with mental disturbances,” she says, “with disturbances of the emotional sort, above all with the people who have been pursued, who arrive here in Mexico with the anguish that they are going to kill them if they deport them, with the anguish that they left their families in hiding, all that emotional burden. And then you lock a person up, and you do not tell them how long they are going to be there, and you do not tell them that this is not a prison. Soon, people break.”
Beyond conditions, migrant advocates and officials clash on whether the use of immigration centers is legal or just.
Migrant advocates say immigration centers serve a punitive purpose, even though Mexican law considers entering the country illegally to be a minor administrative offense, not a crime punishable by imprisonment. Rights groups argue that because migrants have not committed a crime, imprisoning them as if they were criminals violates their constitutional right to personal liberty.
Immigration authorities, on the other hand, do not consider their apprehension and holding of migrants to be detention or imprisonment. Instead, they say that they are providing lodging while they determine migrants’ immigration status and process their cases.
“Without trying to attenuate terms, the National Institute of Migration does not detain migrants,” López said.
Rather, it gives them a place to stay while authorities verify their immigration status, he said.
“They are presented to inspect their immigration status,” López said, “and when it is proven that their stay in our country is irregular, an administrative proceeding is initiated, not a penal or legal one. While their administrative proceeding lasts, they are sheltered in the immigration centers.”
Rights groups, such as Sin Fronteras, consider the term that authorities use, “alojamiento,” which translates to “lodging” in Spanish, as a euphemism for detention. The euphemism lets immigration officials minimize the fact that they are imprisoning migrants, according to a 2012 report on immigration centers by the organization.
Holding migrants is similar to the penal concept of detention, which the Mexican Constitution allows for only 36 hours, according to the 2012 report. Under Mexican immigration law, the government must resolve the case of a migrant in custody within 15 days, though that period can be extended to 60 days or indefinitely if the migrant appeals an immigration agency decision.
The Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova also considers immigration centers to be detention centers because staff members constantly guard migrants and do not let them access their belongings, leave voluntarily, or have contact with the outside world, according to a 2012 document.
López said authorities held migrants at the centers for their own security.
“I am not going to fall into the subject of whether it is a prison or it is not a prison,” he said. “To me, it is clear that it is an immigration center and should have the minimal measures of security for the migrants themselves.”
Immigration authorities take migrants who are in the country illegally to the centers because the law requires it, López said. All countries have immigration controls because it is important to know who is entering and leaving the country for security reasons.
Martínez recognizes that all countries set entry rules but says detention should not be the mechanism that authorities use to hold migrants during their administrative immigration proceedings.
“The ideal is that they are allowed to enter,” she says. “The reality is that that never is going to happen because all countries do exactly the same thing, and they have rules that you have to obey. Each country is sovereign and decides who enters and how they enter, but it does not necessarily have to detain people who do not enter in a regular manner.”
Although the struggles of migration have frequented the media, coverage has been shallow about the diverse issues that Central American migrants who enter Mexico illegally face as they try to settle in the country or travel north. Mayela Sánchez, senior reporter for GPJ's Mexico News Desk, spent one month along Mexico's southern border delving into the nuances of employment, health, violence, gender justice and various human rights issues that push people to migrate and confront them along their journeys. GPJ will feature this series on the first Wednesday of October, November and December.
GPJ translated this article from Spanish.
