EAGLE PASS, Texas — Federal and local officials here are impressed with Mexico’s new effort to slow down the rate at which Central American migrants are allowed to cross into Texas.
Mexico has opened up a facility in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras to house and feed migrants while they await to file their U.S. asylum claim. Mexico is also paying for hundreds of federal police to stand guard outside the facility’s fence and keep them from crossing into the U.S. — anyone caught trying to break out of the facility gets deported from Mexico.
The new effort is making an impression on U.S. officials charged with monitoring the border in Texas.
“This is the first time that I’ve seen them do something,” Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber told the Washington Examiner.
The South Texas sheriff said people have migrated from Central America and Mexico to the U.S. for years, but only now is Mexico putting its foot down to prevent future caravans, a new immigration phenomenon.
[Related: Another caravan heading for the US-Mexico border]
A senior federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to speak on the record agreed the move took border personnel by surprise.
“Mexico has never done this, holding all these bodies. We think this is gonna last a while,” said the official.
Mexican officials weren’t able to provide the Washington Examiner with an estimate of how much the effort is costing, how long it expects to continue this work, or whether they plan to build similar facilities elsewhere along the border.
But a non-government official in Mexico said the country is spending up to $16,000 per day feeding the roughly 1,500 to 1,800 migrants staying in Piedras Negras since last Monday. The city is located in northern Mexico, just over the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass.
Alonso de Hoyos, president of Mexico’s national chamber of commerce, said the decision to open up the facility is a “win-win” for both countries.
“Border residents of both sides of each country suffer from this immigration,” de Hoyos said. “We are not against immigration we are against illegal immigration. We all know that it’s costing us — our taxpayers — a lot because there’s a lot of people that have come into the city … It’s expensive.”
Mexican officials overseeing the facility recently took some of the migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border to show them the dozens and dozens of U.S. law enforcement vehicles parked at the river’s edge. The move was an attempt to show them “it will be impossible to cross the border the illegal way” even if they break out of the facility and get past Mexican police, according to de Hoyos.
Only 20 people each day are allowed to travel to the U.S. port at Eagle Pass and claim a credible fear of returning home, which commences the asylum application process. In light of the federally operated facility’s tough operational approach, some migrants have opted to travel back to their home countries.
Schmerber said the warehouse count is down to 1,500 because some people have chosen to accept the government’s free ride back.
Schmerber, who previously served in the Border Patrol, said Mexico decided to make it nearly impossible for the caravan group to illegally enter the U.S. despite getting to the border. The Departments of State and Homeland Security have pressured Mexico in recent months to stop letting people flow through their country to the U.S.
“This time they’re coming on buses and it would be embarrassing for buses and unloading by the river and them not doing anything,” he said. “We had always complained that Mexico never stopped any immigration from other countries, from Mexico.”
For years, smaller groups of a handful to a dozen people have illegally entered the U.S. and continue to. Schmerber said Mexico largely ignored that activity but is finally acting.
De Hoyos said the Mexican government’s rolling out the red carpet for migrants — compared to the lack of resources for migrants who arrived in Tijuana late last year— would not happen again. He said it was thrown up this time for the safety of the Coahuila state and migrants.
“Massive immigration is going to have a cost politically, cost economically. They need to try to figure it out — how to work together. The Mexican government has to work with the countries south of the border,” de Hoyos said.
