Mexico detains almost half a million migrants attempting to reach US

By James Blears

Mexico is containing the exodus of migration from Central and South America via a policy of detaining the flow.

Mexican authorities have announced that between 1 October and 26 December, they have detained 475,000 would be illegal migrants who had reached the border with the United States. Since the start of the year, that number totals 900,000.

Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramon De La Fuente says this policy is proving successful but can be further improved, pointing out that the number detained has declined by 81 percent during mid-December, if compared to last year.

Part of the reason is that the US/Mexican Border is heavily fortified; whereas it was once porous, it is now significantly more secure. That is causing a bottleneck, with high concentrations of migrants stuck on the Mexican side.

In the past, the numbers detained were only a fraction of those who got across; now, the vast majority are remaining there. Mexican offers of permanent residence and employment are not persuading many to settle because the economic incentives are insufficient.

Yet it is a prime political issue for the new Mexican administration, because US president-elect Donald Trump has said he will impose twenty-five percent tariffs on Mexican exports unless Mexico reduces the flow of illegal narcotics and migrants.

In a call to him in November, President Sheinbaum pledged to tackle this issue, explaining that migrants are often reaching the border but are not able to cross it due to redoubled and reinforced security on both sides.

This, however, does not address or resolve the underlying and overall problem of why migration continues. It is due to acute poverty, a lack of homegrown jobs, and the ever-present threat of street gangs, which try to recruit young people into their ranks.

Thousands upon thousands of have-nots continue to make the perilous journey, in spite of the stranglehold exerted by drug cartels, which often abduct and hold migrants to ransom. Those whose families back home who cannot come up with the money run the risk of their migrating love ones being murdered.

More than 20,000 migrants permanently vanish every year while trying to traverse Mexico`s vast territory. Decaying bodies are often unearthed in clandestine burial grounds in desolate bedgrounds.