The Mexican government has halted a program for considering temporary asylum requests for people arriving at its southern border after more than 12,600 people — mostly from Central America — applied for visas to remain in Mexico just in the past two weeks, according to a new report.
Mexico’s Institute of National Migration announced this week it has filed 12,574 requests on behalf of adults seeking refuge in the country. It approved roughly one-third of those applications and has issued 4,750 visitor cards for people to legally reside and work in southern Mexico, the agency said in a statement.
The Mexican government told Fox News late Wednesday that it has stopped accepting humanitarian requests for the fast-track visa program.
Agentes federales del @INAMI_mx continúan registrando a migrantes centroamericanos que ya habían recibido la pulsera para solicitar la tarjeta de visitante por razones humanitarias. #MigraciónOrdenada #MigraciónSegura #DerechosHumanos @SEGOB_mx pic.twitter.com/ezufXihLlr
— INM (@INAMI_mx) January 30, 2019
The Mexican government did not immediately return a request for comment.
Those who applied for asylum in Mexico did so instead of continuing to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border and requesting asylum in the United States.
Of the more than 12,000 migrants who have asked to remain in Mexico’s southern states, more than 9,000 are Hondurans. Around 1,500 are from El Salvador and 1,700 are from Guatemala. Three asylum seekers are from Africa’s Angola, seven from Haiti, two from Cuba, and two from Brazil.
?Informativo 28 enero 19, @INAMI_mx registró 12,574 solicitudes de visitante por razones humanitarias de adultos migrantes @SEGOB_mx
?El Salvador: 1,473
?Guatemala: 1,746
?Haití: 7
?Honduras: 9,069
?Nicaragua: 269
?Brasil: 2
?Cuba: 2
?Angola: 3
?Ecuador: 1
?Belice: 2 pic.twitter.com/FtCwV42yHc— INM (@INAMI_mx) January 29, 2019
The suspension comes two weeks after a caravan of approximately 2,000 people left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, heading north. The city has one of the highest crime rates in the country. Honduras has one of the highest murder rates per capita in the world. The country is home to 8.25 million people and has reported 90.4 murders for every 100,000 residents, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
The caravan is the latest to leave Northern Triangle countries in Central America in the past year.
At least two groups left Central America in October with the intention of traveling to San Diego, Calif., a 2,500-mile trip from southern Mexico.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees deployed personnel to southern Mexico to assist the government with a surge of people in need of medical care, food, shelter, work, and temporary asylum.
Mexico’s Interior Ministry reported in November 3,230 people had been granted temporary asylum and would be allowed to remain in that region of the country instead of trying to reach the U.S. then apply for asylum there.
Fewer than 2,700 people from that group have been given interim visitor documents, which allow them to work while in Mexico and waiting for COMAR, the country’s Commission for Refugee Aid, to decide whether they can permanently stay.
“Through a multidisciplinary team made up of INM authorities, COMAR, Secretariat of the Navy, Mexican Red Cross and UNHCR, the Central Americans who requested the protection of the Mexican government to stay and live in our country were supported with food, medical attention, psychological, permanent supplies for daily cleaning, and medications,” the Interior Ministry said in a November statement translated from Spanish to English.
Those who remain in Mexico will have to wait between 45 and 90 days to learn if their asylum requests have been granted.
