Since October 12, 2018, a “caravan” of between 4,000 to 7,000 migrants and refugees from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico has been moving through the southwestern states of Mexico en route to the United States. President Trump considered this caravan both a threat to US national security and an opportunity to sway voters during this year’s midterm elections. On Monday, he announced plans to deploy at least 5,200 active-duty troops to the southern border, tweeting “Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border… This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” Notably, Trump has leveled criticism against Mexico’s outgoing President Peña Nieto for failing to better enforce its southern border to prevent Central Americans to enter through Guatemala. What President Trump and his supporters fail to acknowledge is that Mexico has actually been deporting, detaining, and extorting Central American migrants and refugees for years – and the US has paid them for it.
In 2014, American immigration enforcement noticed a steady increase in the number of unauthorized Central Americans passing through Mexico en route to the United States. Incoming migrants primarily matriculated from three countries: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This “Northern triangle” was left crippled by civil war in the 1980s and remains terrorized by government corruption, gang violence, narcotics trafficking, and weak rule of law. The region is widely known as one of the most violent in the world. In 2015, the number of Central American asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. by way of Mexico reached 110,000, an increase five-fold from 2012.
In early July 2014, President Obama asked Congress for as much as $3.7 billion in emergency funds to address the situation at the US southern border. On July 7, 2014, Mexican President Peña Nieto announced a “Southern Border Program” (Programa Frontera Sur) purportedly created with part of the money requested by Obama under the umbrella of the Mérida Initiative. A phone call between the two presidents less than two weeks later confirms their mutual interest in developing a “rational strategy” to address the surge of Central American migrants reaching the US. The aim of the program was to limit migration from Central America, improve Mexican border infrastructure, increase coordination between Mexican agencies and Central American governments, and protect migrants. The plan reinforced security at 12 ports of entry and along well-known migration routes at Mexico’s southern border. Almost immediately, the rate of Central American migration to the U.S. dropped as the rate of apprehensions in Mexico spiked. Specifically, during the Program’s first full year in operation apprehensions increased by 79 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.
Programa Frontera Sur (PFS) is controversial. In January 2018, Amnesty International published an article detailing the abuses suffered by Central American migrants in Mexico in the wake of Plan Sur’s installation. Their research found that 75 percent of those detained by the National Institute of Migration (INM) – Mexico’s migration authority – have not been informed of their right to seek asylum. PFS’s source of funding is also unknown. While the program is technically only a product of Mexico, there is considerable evidence that much (if not most) of its funding comes from the United States by way of the Mérida Initiative. As of February 2016, the State Department had delivered an estimated $20 million of assistance for Mexico’s southern border region. What that money is being allocated toward specifically is not known.
Even though both Mexico and the US both have new presidential administrations, the tradition of the US financially pressuring Mexico into doing it’s “dirty work” regarding Central Americans persists. On September 29, Canada, Mexico, and the US finally reached a deal on a revised version of NAFTA called the USMCA. He acquiesced to a deal that fell short of his initial aspirations. One reason for this may have been to obtain Mexican cooperation on security and immigration. After the USMCA announcement, he tweeted “…The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA. Hopefully, Mexico will stop this onslaught at their Northern Border.” Fascinatingly, twenty-six days after the USMCA agreement was signed, Peña Nieto announced a program to offer temporary identification papers and jobs to migrants who register for asylum in the country. This is a major policy shift considering Mexico denied a $20 million offer from the US to deport migrants in August, before USMCA agreements were reached.
As the caravan continues through Mexico, the pressure to prevent them from reaching the US grows. As it stands, the current arrangement is dangerous from Mexican, US, and Central American perspectives. If the US continues to hinge money on Mexican security expansion, trade negotiations suffer. As Mexico remains complicit in the US’s agenda, the incoming López Obrador administration risks losing legitimacy entirely in the eyes of the Mexican public and enduring heightened critique from the international community for human rights violations. Most importantly, Central Americans continue to suffer as plans are hastily constructed around them and both Mexico and the US continue to ignore their legitimate asylum claims. Mexico and the US must both design a response to the migration crisis that is both practical, effective, and humanitarian. Such a response must be untied from ongoing trade negotiations and prioritize addressing the root of the problem through aid to the Central American countries that most need it.
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