@La Jornada
On July 25th, a group of between three and four thousand people of various nationalities, including Venezuelans, Cubans, Central Americans and some African countries, left the city of Tapachula heading for Huixtla, with the intention of reaching the offices of the Comprehensive Border Transit Attention Center (CAITF) in order to obtain permits that allow them to travel through Mexico and thus be able to reach the northern border and cross into the United States, saying that it is their goal and they do not plan to stay in Mexico.
According to the spokeswoman for this sixteenth caravan, they made the decision to leave Tapachula after being stranded in “inhuman conditions” for almost two weeks without receiving a response from the National Migration Institute, “it is intolerable, we have waited for a response from Migration and until 11 o’clock they don’t come out to show their faces. They say that we have to go to the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (COMAR) to make the request, but the appointments are not until November or December, but how are we going to be until then? Impossible, there are people who do not have a livelihood, they are not eating, all our human rights are being violated.”
After walking 40 km, the distance that separates the cities of Tapachula and Huixtla, the caravan made up of at least 600 boys and girls, 1,200 women, including some pregnant women, and approximately 2,000 men, arrived at the CAIFT offices and took over the facilities, which caused a clash with National Guard agents, who had been deployed in the area and nearby to contain the caravan.
For their part, members of the Collective for Observation and Monitoring of Human Rights in the Mexican Southeast (COMDHSEM), which is made up of 20 civil organizations at border points in Mexico, issued a call for urgent action requesting the Ministry of the Interior (SEGOB), the National Institute of Migration and the NG “to ensure and respect the physical and emotional integrity of migrants with international protection needs.”
Likewise, the spokespersons for the caravan asked civil society and human rights organizations to send them humanitarian aid, because due to the conditions in which they find themselves since their arrival in Mexico, there are sick people, both minors as adults who require medical attention, hydration and food.
Until Thursday, July 28th, they still had no response, so they continue with the blockades on the coastal highway and in the CAITF offices.
For more informatiuon in Spanish:
Nueva caravana migrante parte de Tapachula rumbo a Huixtla, Chiapas (La Jornada 25 de julio 2022)
Dos nuevas caravanas con 4.300 migrantes parten de México (DW 25 de julio 2022)
¡Queremos el permiso!, migrantes rompen el cerco y toman estación migratoria en Huixtla (Chiapas Paralelo 27 de julio 2022)
Conferencia de prensa COMDHSEM (Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova 28 de julio 2022)
For more information from SIPAZ:
Chiapas: Caravana de migrantes sale desde Tapachula rumbo a Estados Unidos.(June 7, 2022)
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