Cuban Lorenzo Pérez, 27, denounced that Mexican Immigration agents charge between 300 and 500 Mexican pesos (17 to 28 dollars) for each migrant from Cuba and Venezuela who passes through each of the 15 checkpoints between Tapachula (Chiapas) and Oaxaca. “It’s a scam. In Mexico there is no law for migrants. How can one pay more than 400 dollars to get to another state,” he laments.
Pérez, who was part of the “Exodus of Poverty” caravan, which joined in December of last year due to the refusal to grant transit permits, tells 14 intervene who decided to leave the group along with four other Cubans when they found out that this Tuesday they were going to send a bus to Juchitán to take them to Oaxaca. “That’s a lie, they put you on the bus and what they do is return you to Tapachula (the starting point of the route to the United States from Mexico, on the southern border). Last time they took them with the promise of work and a humanitarian visa, but in the end they gave them a paper to spend 30 days in Mexico and in the end you had to leave the country.
Migrant defense lawyer José Luis Pérez Jiménez confirmed the Cuban’s version to this newspaper. In the municipality of Juchitán (Oaxaca), he recalls, there was the case of a group of Africans whom the agents intimidated and detained for more than 17 days. “They demanded 5,000 pesos (more than 280 dollars) from these people to release them. In the end they managed to process an amparo and they no longer paid the extortion,” he says.
To evade the checkpoints of Immigration agents and the National Guard, many of the migrants resort to coyotes who use motorcycles to take them from Tapachula to Oaxaca. “The motorcycles are next to the checkpoints. They pay the authorities a part of the 400 pesos they charge each migrant,” says Lorenzo Pérez, a native of Pinar del Río.
The lawyer, for his part, agrees: there is complicity between the authorities and these “motorized traffickers to continue exploiting irregular foreigners,” as he describes them.
Immigration is a big business in Tapachula, says the lawyer. “A room with two beds is rented to groups of up to 25 or 30 people. Each one is charged 200 pesos a day (11 dollars). The bathroom is shared and some do not have toilets, they are latrines.”
Pérez regretted that even the laundry rooms are rented to these people. “They charge them 5 Mexican pesos to wash and warn them that if they use too much water they must pay double.”
Given the exodus of irregular foreigners in the state of Chiapas and the disinterest of the Mexican authorities, Pérez denounced the lack of commitment of the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which in January of last year proclaimed the construction of a center to care for migrants with a investment of 16,000,000 pesos (924,199 dollars), with the participation of the United States and Canada. “In three months he said it would be there, it’s already been a year and there is no progress on the project. Specifically, nothing exists,” laments the lawyer.
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