Mexico: thousands of migrants gather in Tapachula stadium to ask for refuge

Thousands of migrants gathered on Monday outside the so-called Olympic Stadium in the municipality of Tapachula, in the south of the country, after the Commission Mexican of Aid to Refugees (Comar) opened new appointments to request their asylum status.

More than 5,000 migrants, most of them Haitians, gathered in this public space, exceeding all the expectations of the authorities, who were unable to serve this large group of people despite the fact that the area is also controlled by the National Guard.

Although in this enclosure there were metal fences, the migrants bet on them to ask that they be attended, while others were kept crowded in the main access.

“We have good will. When you leave your country it is to work and to help society. Latin America and the Caribbean is our land. I don’t know why they treat us like this”Jacob Hendri, a Haitian migrant who is looking for papers to regularize his situation in Tapachula.

Petter is another of the Haitians who remains stranded in Tapachula and he said that there is no way to work in this municipality in the southeastern state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala.

He explained that his objective is to obtain papers so that he can go to another city and have job opportunities. “We need documents to work and eat, because the Haitian people do not deserve this”, he pointed.

Despite the huge volume of people who moved to this space today, so far no incidents have been recorded.

On September 28, the Comar began to assist migrants, many of them stranded in Tapachula for weeks and months, from this stadium enabled for the occasion.

According to the authorities, they seek to receive up to 2,000 migrants a day for four weeks and from Monday to Friday in order to avoid crowds in the current offices where these cases are handled and thus speed up the procedures.

In this macro-care center of the Comar there is a special care protocol where police corporations from the three levels of government participate, as well as the Chiapas State Secretariat of Health.

La Comar has received a historic number of 90,314 refugee applications – from 99 different nationalities – between January and September.

The region has experienced an unprecedented migratory wave since the beginning of the year with a historical flow of 147,000 undocumented persons detected in Mexico from January to August, triple that of 2020, and a record of 212,000 migrants detained only in July by the Customs and Border Protection Office. (CBP) from the United States. EFE

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