The Associated Press witnessed several such busloads in recent days carrying at least 450 Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans from Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, to Monterrey, where they are left to fend for themselves with no support on housing, work or schooling for children, who appear to make up about half the group.
Mexico has received some 20,000 asylum seekers returned to await U.S. immigration court dates under the program colloquially known as “remain in Mexico.” But there had been no sign of such large-scale moving of people away from the border before now, after the program expanded to Nuevo Laredo in violence- and cartel-plagued Tamaulipas, a state where the U.S. State Department warns against all travel due to kidnappings and other crime.
“It’s clearly important to move people out of very dangerous Mexican border towns,” said Maureen Meyer, an immigration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, which advocates for human rights in the region. “But simply busing them somewhere else without any guidance on what’s awaiting them and without having the services available to house asylum seekers and support them, the Mexican government’s really exposing them to further risk.”
This account is based on in-person interviews with more than 20 migrants who made the two-hour, 130-mile (220-kilometer) journey south to the industrial city in the week since the new practice began.
Unlike asylum seekers who wait in line for months to file claims in the U.S. and are then sent back, all those taken to Monterrey who spoke with the AP said they had crossed illegally and spent several days in U.S. detention centers before being returned with a court date. Some said they had not asked for asylum but rather to be returned to their home countries, but were told that going to Mexico or continued detention were the only options.
U.S. authorities, those interviewed agreed, told them Mexico would offer them work, schooling and health care while they waited. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
The returnees were met at the crossing by waiting Mexican immigration officials who handed them documents presumably allowing them to work and move about the country. Without further explanation they were then loaded at an immigration station parking lot onto buses with the logos of private companies with charter contracts with the INM.
The migrants were not forced to make the journey but said they didn’t see any other option. They know the dangers in Tamaulipas, where organized crime groups have been known to extort, kidnap and kill people like them. In 2010, 72 were massacred in the town of San Fernando.
In Monterrey they found a big, unfamiliar city where, unbeknownst to them, shelters were already overflowing, and it quickly became clear they’d have to make do as best as they could.
José Martín Carmona, head of Tamaulipas’ governmental Institute for Migrants, acknowledged that the state had refused to receive more migrants, saying it lacks resources.
But he said he was unaware of the buses to Monterrey, even though they depart less than a mile (kilometer) from his offices: “Right now we have zero communication with the INM,” Carmona said.
Those arriving in Monterrey feel like they’ve been lied to and abandoned by everyone — except, some said, by their coyotes who held up their end of the bargain.
The Mexican government says it is studying setting up makeshift shelters at warehouses and other properties to handle returnees to Nuevo Laredo. Meanwhile “remain in Mexico” has gone into effect for another Tamaulipas border city: Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.
Meyer said the busing policy also raises concerns about how asylum seekers will be able to access U.S. lawyers to assist with their claims, and who is going to make sure they can get back to Nuevo Laredo for their U.S. appointments, which are for September and October.