Organizations, communities and leaders from South and Central America have demanded, through a joint letter addressed to the presidents of the United States and Mexico, the end of the current immigration policy, which, among other tragedies, caused the recent death of 39 migrants, mostly indigenous and of color, after a fire broke out in an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
Thus, 45 organizations, among which those of civil society, education, immigration and communication stand out, joined the collective complaint against Joseph Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which demands the closure of provisional stays and immigration stations in Mexico, as well as a root change in migration policy that bets on a perspective from Human Rights and not from the containment and detention of people in a context of mobility.
“We see with concern how the governments of Mexico and the United States rush to disclaim all responsibility and blame the migrant population for the tragedy, when it is clear that the policies of both governments are responsible for the migratory context in which we are today. witnesses throughout the central and northern region of the continent," they point out in the letter.
In the same way, they specified that, even before the «Stay in Mexico Program», multiple organizations of the Civil Society and defenders of Human Rights, had already pointed out the conditions of serious risk in which the migrant population finds itself within the temporary stays and migratory stations, «which are nothing else, but prisons».
In this sense, they recalled that in the last session of the Consultative Council on Migration Policy of the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, held days before the tragedy in Ciudad Juárez, organizations raised their voices and denounced the conditions of the immigration stations, while the National Institute of Migration presented a report highlighting progress in the process of "humanization" of these places.
Added to this is the fact that some migrant shelters have denounced that the new online asylum application system to the United States, called CBP One, is used as another pretext to return to the Mexico-Guatemala border people who already They have a quote, "perpetuating the strategy of contradiction and confusion during the regularization process that ends up violating the human rights of migrants."
"What happened in the Provisional Stay of the National Institute of Migration in Ciudad Juárez, is proof that the repeated complaints made over the years have been ignored and a consequence of the difficulties that the same Institute poses for the monitoring and observation of the conditions and practices within these detention centers," the organizations and institutions pointed out in the letter addressed to the leaders.
Among the complaints, they specified that, before the fire at the Ciudad Juárez immigration center, local organizations denounced that personnel from the National Institute of Migration ?INM? it was detaining and sending migrants, including people with stay and transit permits, to immigration stations.
"It's not just the fire. It is not only the Provisional Stay of Ciudad Juárez. It is the immigration policy of Mexico and the United States. It is the policy of the States towards a population that is forced to leave their communities due to the adverse conditions caused by failed government systems, environmental models and justice systems”, they emphasize.
In view of this, they have made a call to all organizations, communities and citizens, so that this Thursday, April 6, they express their rejection of the immigration policy of Mexico and the United States and demand respect for the rights of victims and their families, as well as as, access to truth and justice.
As well as the repair of the damage and guarantee of non-repetition; immediate stop to the practices of detention and deportation of migrants and asylum seekers; and the establishment of a working group with the participation of citizens, civil society, human rights defenders, academia and migrants with the purpose of redesigning the regional migration policy.
"The only way to honor the victims of this tragedy is the full transformation of said policy and the human mobility management model," they pointed out.
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