More than 8 thousand migrants, including Cubans, in the city of Tapachula in Mexico, were transferred to other cities, according to the National Migration Institute (INM), after a stampede of migrants occurred in the recent days, mostly Haitians, asking for documentation at the Comar facilities, to continue on the way to the United States.
Several press reports indicate that the transfer of more than eight thousand people was carried out in different camps in Chiapas and other states, to guarantee their safety and speed up the process. On September 18, there was a stampede of migrants that left at least 10 people injured.
The INM reported that 189 buses and 73 vans were used to transport 8,152 migrants to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Huixtla, San Cristóbal and Palenque, in Chiapas; Villa Hermosa, Tabasco and Acayucan, Veracruz. Therefore, the space was released in the facilities of Comar and the work was streamlined in that entity in Tapachula, where there was a kind of “bottleneck.”
The director of the INM, Francisco Garduño, visited Tapachula to monitor the operation of several shelters and talk to migrants who are waiting for the answer to their asylum requests to regularize their status in Mexico.
Wave of migrants in Tapachula
Garduño added that he saw the camp built by the INM for Comar in the ecological park of Tapachula, where the treatment of refugee requests continues “in a wide area that is not dangerous for the applicants, in to avoid violent acts due to overcrowding.”
In addition, humanitarian facilities located in various locations in Mexico were examined. Some data suggest that in Tapachula and its surroundings there are more than 20 thousand Cubans waiting for transit permits to continue on their way to the north of the country, where they will wait for their CBP appointment. One to legally enter the United States.
