Amid pressure from the new Trump administration in the United States for Mexico to stem the flow of undocumented migrants heading north, Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration received 58,800 asylum applications in the first nine months of the year, a figure similar to the 58,644 received during the same period in 2014.
According to the latest data from the National Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), updated through September, the migrants who most frequently request asylum in Mexico are Cubans, followed by Venezuelans and Haitians, although there has been an increase in the arrival of people from Africa.
An analysis by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also indicates that half of the asylum applications submitted this year were processed in Chiapas, Tabasco, Veracruz, and Mexico City.
“In the last five years, Mexico has received around 500,000 asylum applications, with a recognition rate exceeding 60 percent,” UNHCR highlights in its assessment of Mexico, published last September.
The tightening of immigration policy in the United States since Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20 of this year has led migrants to choose to remain in Mexico rather than reach the United States, states Javier Urbano, director of the Migration Program at the Ibero-American University (IBERO).
However, not all of them seek asylum because the intention is “to return north once Trump’s term ends or they can save enough money to pay a smuggler.”
According to UNHCR, although it is difficult to obtain an exact figure for the number of migrants entering and leaving the country due to their mobility, 66 percent of those who arrive declare their intention to stay in Mexico.
After being sworn in for a second term as president, Donald Trump signed several executive orders, including reinforcing the border with Mexico with National Guard troops and expanding the border wall.
He also suspended appointments through the CBP One app, which his predecessor, Joe Biden, had implemented to allow migrants to access asylum in an orderly and less dangerous manner.
At the same time, the Republican launched a series of raids against migrants that have resulted in the detention of hundreds of people, many of whom remain for weeks in immigration detention centers before being returned to their countries of origin.
Source: oem
