Mexican raids curtail migrants

CHAHUITES, Mexico -- Mexico is making a big effort to stop the flow of Central Americans trying to reach the United States and has dramatically cut the number of child migrants. But it is unclear for how long federal officials will keep up the raids that curtail them.

A federal police officer said his group was told officers would be stationed in southern Mexico for six months. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he isn't allowed to talk to the media.

Convoys of Mexican federal police and immigration service employees in southern Mexico have been scouring the tracks of the infamous freight train known as "La Bestia," or The Beast, that has long carried crowds of people on its route north. They have also set up moving roadblocks, checking the documents of passengers on interstate buses.

Journalists witnessed dozens of federal police and Mexican immigration agents storming the train as it came to an unscheduled stop in the post-midnight darkness Friday.

Fewer than 15 were detained on a train that once carried 600 to 1,000 migrants at a time.

American and Mexican officials say they are noticing a drop-off all along the route.

The roundups follow U.S. requests for help from Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, earlier this summer when the number of unaccompanied children turning themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol reached what President Barack Obama called an "urgent humanitarian crisis."

On Aug. 7, the Department of Homeland Security released data showing the number of children -- unaccompanied or with at least one parent -- arrested along the southwest border of the United States in July was roughly 13,000, half what it had been in June. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the trend appeared to be continuing during the first week of August, and Obama said Thursday that numbers for the whole month will show a further decline.

"We're seeing a significant downward trend in terms of these unaccompanied children," Obama said in a news conference.

With the new crackdown, the migrants who once circulated openly in shelters and boarded rail cars as the cars were being attached to locomotives are forced to hide in the woods, where criminals lurk. There are few women and no children because the journey now requires jumping onto a moving train.

Some of the Central American men say that instead of trying to cross into the United States, they'll now stay and look for work in Mexico. Many families have apparently decided not to attempt the journey through Mexico at all since news of the raids and checkpoints -- combined with stepped-up efforts in the U.S. and among Central American governments -- reached their communities, said Carlos Solis, the manager of a shelter in Arriaga. He said the city, once bustling with migrants waiting to board trains, emptied out almost overnight.

"They're also going after the coyotes, so it is increasing the cost of the trip and making them move through less visible areas," Solis said, referring to the smugglers paid to get migrants through to the U.S. border.

It is a far cry from the wave of migration that pressed toward the U.S. earlier this year, spurred by a surge in violence in several Central American countries and news that women and children who reached the United States were being let go inside the country with orders to return for immigration hearings because family shelter space had filled up.

From October to July, about 63,000 unaccompanied children were detained after entering the U.S. illegally, double the number from the same period a year earlier. Another 63,000 families -- mothers or fathers with young children -- were picked up during that period.

Omar Zamora, a Border Patrol spokesman in the Rio Grande Valley, where most of the unaccompanied children have entered the U.S., said Thursday that the agency was seeing 30-40 children in custody each day in recent weeks. That is down from a peak of 300 per day earlier this summer.

Information for this article was contributed by Christopher Sherman of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/31/2014

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