Fewer migrants on way to U.S., Mexico reports

Stepped-up law enforcement, jobs effort cited in 39% drop

Mexico's Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard speaks with reporters, Thursday, May 23, 2019, after meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the U.S. State Department in Washington.
Mexico's Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard speaks with reporters, Thursday, May 23, 2019, after meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the U.S. State Department in Washington.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico said Tuesday that the monthly number of migrants traveling through the country to reach the U.S. border has declined by 39% since May.

Mexico's foreign relations secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, said the number of migrants fell from 144,278 in May to 87,648 near the end of July.

Ebrard said the drop is the result of greater Mexican enforcement of its immigration laws, as well as investment in job creation in Central America.

Ebrard said Mexico would hold a conference soon to attract international donors for a Central American development plan.

He also said Mexico would not provide shelters for all the migrants sent back to the country by the United States while they await the resolution of their U.S. asylum requests.

That has become an issue in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo. Hundreds of migrants have been bused from the dangerous border town to the city of Monterrey, where they're left at a bus station.

Ebrard said more than half of the migrants sent back under the U.S.' Remain in Mexico program, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, hadn't asked for shelter.

"Who is offered shelter? The ones who need it, typically families," said Ebrard. "But not everybody is asking for it.

"I would say that more than half aren't asking for it," he said, adding that many had rented rooms at hotels or houses.

Ebrard suggested that the problem of crowds of migrants either waiting to file U.S. asylum claims or waiting for hearings was declining in some areas.

"People shouldn't think that at all points along the border we are going to receive more migrants every day," Ebrard said. "In Tijuana, there has been a very, very, very big drop. In Yuma, on our side in Sonora, in Ciudad Juarez, there has been a significant decrease."

He noted that Mexico was in the process of opening a services center for migrants in Ciudad Juarez.

Not everything in Mexico's immigration plan is going smoothly, however.

The head of Mexico's National Immigration Institute, Francisco Garduno, said almost a tenth of the agency's officers were under investigation over allegations of corruption or other abuses.

Garduno said there were between 400 and 500 internal-affairs investigations underway at the agency, which has a total force of about 4,500 employees and about 1,500 federal enforcement agents. Immigration agents have been accused in the past of participating in migrant smuggling and extortion of migrants.

U.S. FACILITIES

In the U.S., meanwhile, President Donald Trump's administration is scouting sites in central Florida, Virginia and Los Angeles for future facilities to hold unaccompanied minors who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent letters to Florida lawmakers Monday saying it is looking for vacant properties in those locations to build permanent licensed facilities for children under age 18 who have entered the United State illegally without a parent or guardian.

"The search for an addition of permanent licensed facilities is being pursued to reduce the potential need for temporary influx shelters in the future," the letters said.

The nation's largest child-migrant facility is in Homestead, Fla., where immigration advocates have described "prisonlike" conditions.

Meanwhile, immigration lawyers say adult migrants are being detained in packed Border Patrol cells with no communication with family or friends.

Only after lawyers sue the government on their behalf are the migrants transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, the lawyers say.

One group of lawyers has filed lawsuits on behalf of the spouses, siblings and relatives of 18 migrants -- all of whom were removed from their cells almost immediately.

The lawyers said they believe that the government is trying to avoid a federal judge issuing a sweeping order that would require the release of potentially thousands of people detained by the Border Patrol or would force changes to improve the conditions in cells that activists and government inspectors have said are squalid.

"They know they're wrong and the court's certainly going to come down on them because of the conditions," said Thelma Garcia, a South Texas attorney. "It's a losing battle for them in that regard."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to answer questions about cases because of the pending litigation.

Information for this article was contributed by Mike Schneider and Nomaan Merchant of The Associated Press.

A Section on 07/31/2019

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