Migrants, largely from Haiti, burst into an asylum workplace in southern Mexico on Monday, demanding papers.
Throngs of migrants knocked over metallic barricades and rushed into the workplace within the metropolis of Tapachula, pushing previous Nationwide Guard officers and police stationed on the workplace. A few of the migrants have been trampled by their colleagues within the rush.
Authorities later satisfied many to depart, and no accidents have been reported.
The stress comes as asylum claims in Mexico have skyrocketed, reaching over 100,000 to date this yr.
Crowds of pissed off migrants, together with many from Cuba and Honduras, say they’ve needed to await weeks in some instances for an appointment on the workplace in Tapachula, close to the border with Guatemala.
On the workplace, run by the Mexican Fee for Refugee Support, migrants can file claims for asylum in Mexico. Most, nevertheless, intend to make use of the papers to journey extra safely and simply to the U.S. border.
“It’s very sophisticated, there are too many individuals right here, the Haitians get determined, they knock over the barricades and that solely makes the method slower,” stated Cuban migrant Miguel Argoten.
Argoten stated he had been ready every week in Tapachula to start out the asylum utility course of. The workplace has been getting about 2,000 appointment requests per day not too long ago.
Mexico is on monitor to obtain extra asylum purposes this yr than ever earlier than as the stream of migrants threatens to overwhelm governments of a number of Latin American nations alongside the migratory route.
Andrés Ramírez Silva, the director of Mexico’s refugee company, stated final week that the variety of asylum purposes his company receives this yr may attain 150,000, nicely above the 129,000 file set in 2021.
“Successfully we now have a tempo that may be very above what we now have in our file yr that was 2021,” Ramírez Silva stated. If that tempo continues he predicted they may attain 150,000 by yr’s finish. By way of August they already had 100,000 — 25% above the identical interval in 2021 — greater than half at Mexico’s shared border with Guatemala.
Some migrants obtained unruly through the wait final week and pushed their method into the company’s places of work, which led to the deployment of Nationwide Guard officers, who had little luck in preserving order.
Ramírez Silva stated Cubans, Haitians and Hondurans have made up about 80% of the asylum purposes on the Tapachula workplace. He stated his company had requested the federal authorities for extra assets to broaden its capability.
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