MEXICO CITY — When American and Mexican officials prepared to meet in Guatemala in July, one issue in particular was weighing on the United States.
A caravan of hundreds of Central American migrants had trekked through Mexico a few months before, seeking passage into the United States. American officials wanted to know: Would Mexico agree to force such migrants to apply for asylum there, instead of letting them enter the United States?
The Mexicans said no.
Today, with many thousands more in transit, by far the largest single movement of migrants north in decades, the pressure to resolve the issue has reached new heights.
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With a proposal broached last July known as a “safe third country agreement” seemingly off the table — it has been rejected by Mexico’s president-elect — Mexico again finds its migration system in a state of crisis, and in the cross hairs of American officials.
An estimated 6,000 migrants have entered Mexico in recent days, part of a new, and much larger, caravan of migrants fleeing the grinding poverty and violence of El Salvador, Guatemala and, for most of them, Honduras.
In anticipation of their arrival at the United States border, President Trump has pressured Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico to halt their passage. But while Mexico has long bent to the migration mandates of the United States, the sheer number of those fleeing this time around has presented new complications.
Ever since 2014, when at the urging of the Obama administration the Mexican authorities began to crack down on illegal migration, migrants have been ensnared in a vast dragnet along Mexico’s southern border.
Thousands have been detained and deported, while thousands more have applied for asylum inside of Mexico. Such claims have soared severalfold since the crackdown began.
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But the rush of migrants in the last week has overwhelmed Mexico’s Southern Border Plan. Most are not applying for asylum, leaving Mexico with a tough choice. Do they apprehend thousands of migrants, creating a humanitarian crisis — not to mention a public relations one? Or do they simply accompany the exodus to ensure an orderly passage?
It seems, for the moment, that the government has chosen the latter.
Mexico is already struggling to assimilate the surge of migrants seeking protection from the dangers back home — some 14,000 in 2017 — though Mexico itself hardly meets the definition of a safe country. Last year was its deadliest in two decades.
The incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who takes office in December, has been a fierce critic of the United States’ handling of migrants.
In an interview, the incoming minister of foreign affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, said: “We don’t agree with this, as it would be counterproductive and would aggravate the problem. Another policy is needed.”
The situation also poses a challenge for Mr. Trump, who has threatened to cut aid abroad and deploy the military at home to apprehend migrants.
If the military rounds up thousands of migrants, among them women and children, it could be a public relations disaster on par with separating children from their parents at the border. But if the president opts not to do this, it might encourage still more migrants to travel in large groups.
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Already, rumors of a new migrant caravan from Honduras are spreading.
“If you allow these large movements of people to come through, what does that mean for future flows?” said Maureen Meyer of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “Does this become the new way to travel? There are a lot of unknowns of how this will play out in the next few days.”
The Caravan’s Route
A caravan of undocumented immigrants from Central America started in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with fewer than 200 people on Oct. 12. This past weekend, thousands crossed the Guatemalan border into Mexico.
MEXICO
Friday,
Oct. 12
GUATEMALA
San Pedro
Sula
Area of
detail
Monday,
Oct. 15
Guatemala
City
Tecún
Umán
Tapachula
HONDURAS
Esquipulas
Wednesday,
Oct. 17
Most of the migrants spent Sunday night in Tapachula and continued north on Monday.
EL SALVADOR
Pacific
Ocean
MEXICO
GUATEMALA
About 5 a.m. on Sunday, the caravan started moving on foot toward Tapachula. Over the weekend, the Honduran government released photos showing a number of buses with immigrants returning from Guatemala.
As many as 4,000 people by some estimates began crossing Guatemala's border with Mexico onThursday.
Ciudad Hidalgo
Ciudad Tecún Umán
Bridge
crossing
5 MILES
In the United States, the caravan has become a political issue, particularly ahead of midterm elections next month. But the divide on whether to welcome migrants or deport them has resonated in Mexico, too.
While some Mexicans have offered food, water and free rides to those making their way through the country, others have lashed out in fear, worried the migrants might steal jobs or increase criminal activity if allowed to stay.
“There is a big social divide when it comes to this flow of immigration, between acceptance and support for them and a total rejection,” said Claudia Masferrer, a migration expert at the Colegio de Mexico, a Mexico City university. “This caravan confronts Mexico with what we as a country have demanded of the U.S. vis-à-vis our own Mexican migrants.”
The renewed focus on migrants from Central America in the United States comes as data from the Department of Homeland Security shows that nearly 400,000 people were apprehended on the border for the fiscal year 2018, which ended Sept. 30.
The Border Patrol apprehended 16,658 people traveling as families in September, a record, according to unpublished government data obtained by The New York Times. Arrests for the 2018 fiscal year, meanwhile, reached 107,212, exceeding the previous high of 77,857 in fiscal 2016.
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The caravan can be seen as a direct challenge to the way that the asylum system has transformed under Mr. Trump. Through policy and practice, changes imposed by his administration have sent a clear message to the world: As a place of refuge, America is largely closed for business.
“This is a reflection of what happens when you undermine orderly access to asylum,” said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group. “You get chaos. And that’s what this administration has done.”
The policy shifts have greatly increased the number of asylum seekers who are prosecuted criminally under the policy known as “zero tolerance,” and eliminated large categories of persecution that no longer qualify for asylum status.
Under “zero tolerance,” asylum seekers who enter the United States without first presenting themselves at Border Patrol offices automatically face criminal prosecution. By comparison, such people were prosecuted under President Barack Obama only if they had been caught crossing the border illegally in the past.
Victims of domestic violence, and to a much smaller degree, gang violence, once qualified for asylum if they could prove that the authorities in their home countries were unable or unwilling to protect them. In June, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that such cases would no longer qualify.
The Trump administration has also increased the scrutiny applied during the first phase of the asylum application process, known as a “credible fear interview,” which determines whether migrants will be allowed to proceed with their cases. More changes are expected in this direction.
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“The extremely low bar for establishing credible fear is ripe for fraud and abuse,” said Michael Bars, a spokesman for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that evaluates asylum claims. While a credible fear referral doesn’t equal asylum status, he said, it does earn “a free ticket into the U.S., allowing individuals to disappear into the interior to live and work illegally.”
Newly imposed limits on the number of people who can approach certain border crossings each day, known as “metering,” have also had an impact.
The long lines, with people sleeping outside to gain access, may have pushed some asylum seekers to cross the border illegally, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. “The backlogs created by these competing directives likely resulted in additional illegal border crossings,” the report found, meaning potential prosecution under “zero tolerance.”
Just as tightened border policies may have led to more illegal immigration, Mr. Trump’s tough-on-migrants rhetoric could also harden the stance of Mr. López Obrador.
“Trump’s threats to Mexico makes it harder politically for the new administration to sit down and talk immigration,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a research group. “There was always going to be trouble finding areas of agreement, but he is making it a lot harder for the incoming government to deal with this issue.”
Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Mexico City, and Ron Nixon and Gardiner Harris from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Mexico, Overwhelmed by Surge of Migrants, Is Again in U.S. Cross Hairs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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