ARRIAGA, Mexico -- Jose Vallecillo, a 41-year-old metalworker from Las Manos, Honduras, has a good-paying job welding steel freight containers waiting for him in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, at a factory where he's worked before and the owner invited him to return.
But getting there has proved much harder than expected: Vallecillo, wife Sandra and 4-year-old daughter Brittany have endured a fruitless wait for visas, spent all their money on food and transportation, and escaped a police raid in which hundreds were arrested and they've hidden out in the countryside.
The family is a prime example of how Mexico's crackdown on migration is not cutting off the flow of Central Americans, but rather forcing people into the shadows and greater danger, despite government assurances that the central thrust of its policy is to protect them.
For months, Central Americans have banded together in caravans and employed a safety-in-numbers strategy, although efforts to discourage the large groups now have migrants wandering woods, swamps and rail lines in small bands of one or two dozen, exposed to the elements and also at greater risk of being preyed upon by criminals.
Vallecillo set out with the equivalent of $680 in savings from Honduras. He'd heard that Mexico was handing out visas to migrants, and decided it was time to go to the factory job.
But hope turned to disillusionment when he found that Mexico wasn't handing out humanitarian visas at the border anymore, and the work visas it offered allow migrants to work only in poor southern states like Chiapas and Oaxaca where pay is low. The slow pace of visa processing has angered migrants so much that they have scuffled with police and immigration agents on a pair of occasions.
After 27 days waiting for the visa that immigration officials promised but endlessly put off, Vallecillo and his family had enough.
They joined the caravan of around 3,000 people that was passing through southern Mexico and then fled Monday's raid that broke the group up, hiding in a church and spending that night in the woods. By Wednesday they were sleeping under the stars next to some railroad tracks after authorities in Arriaga, Chiapas, ran them out of the city park.
"They didn't want to see migrants there," Vallecillo said. "Once you run out of money, and you can't bathe or change clothes, people start looking at you differently, like the classic stereotype of a migrant."
His daughter has taken to eating seed pods from the ground. The family is now looking at hopping aboard a freight train for the rest of the trip, because they no longer have a dime.
A man of calm demeanor, Vallecillo's resentment is nonetheless palpable. He said he has always worked, tries to keep clean and doesn't like being looked at as a transient person.
"Why did they have to deceive us?" Vallecillo asked. "If they weren't going to give us visas, why did they make us wait? At least they could have gotten out of the way and let us go through. We'd be in Monterrey by now, with a decent life."
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's promises of a new, more humane approach to migration seem to be melting -- under U.S. pressure -- into the old, deportation-oriented policies of his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, who started a crackdown in 2014 that included police raids on the train line that Vallecillo now hopes to catch north. Many migrants fear raids on the train may start again.
Mexico has deported thousands of migrants in recent months and also issued more than 15,000 humanitarian visas, but officials say they are now being more selective about who gets them. Those detained in the raid this week were said to have refused to register for the regional visa that lets migrants stay in southern Mexico. Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said that migrants' human rights are a priority.
Officials commonly use the term "rescuing" to describe detentions of migrants, and some do end up in dangerous situations in need of help, such as when they're trafficked in hot, overcrowded tractor-trailers.
But many feel they wouldn't be taking the kind of risks they're taking now if not for the raids and other measures.
Dennis Javier Cortes, 21, walked with his wife and a couple dozen other Hondurans for 13 days, following the rail tracks to avoid detection and possible deportation. His feet, clad in open-toed sandals were battered and black with grime, with a half-inch-long gash on one toe.
"We drank water from ditches, from the swamps we passed. There was a crocodile in one swamp," Cortes said. Because they are in a mango-growing region, their main food supply on the trek has been fallen mangos.
He and his wife had already been through far worse: In February a gang in Arriaga dragged the couple into the woods and held a knife to Cortes' throat as they took turns gang-raping his wife, he said.
While that specific incident can't be directly tied to Mexico's crackdown, most migrants say they found safety in the large numbers of the caravans. Many now see caravans as becoming a thing of the past after the raids and the fear they instilled.
Others feel they have been stripped of their dignity by Mexico's migratory policies. Truckers, warned by the government they could face fines, no longer stop to offer rides, and immigration officials charged with handling visas are said to have become surly and cold in dealing with migrants.
Cortes and his wife filed a criminal complaint about the rape, something that should have gotten them automatic visas in Mexico as crime victims. But Cortes said immigration agents ripped up the documents during Monday's raid, which they narrowly escaped.
Information for this article was contributed by Marcos Alemán of The Associated Press.
A Section on 04/26/2019