Migrants and residents of Mexico City have reported raids by personnel from the National Migration Institute (INM) at various locations, according to the specialized news outlet Conexión Migrante, based on firsthand accounts and videos circulating on social media.
A Mexico City resident contacted the outlet’s assistance center to report that his Cuban wife was taken from her home and detained on May 4 by federal security and immigration officials in the Cuauhtémoc borough.
His wife was detained without a warrant and taken away in a vehicle bearing the INM logo. Ten other people were also taken from the building, located in the San Rafael neighborhood.
After several calls to the Institute, the man learned that his wife had been transferred to the Las Agujas immigration detention center in Iztapalapa and later to the state of Veracruz, Conexión Migrante reported.
In another incident on April 30, in front of the Antara shopping center in the Polanco neighborhood, a citizen recorded on video the moment migrants were interrogated and forced into two vans bearing the logo of the National Migration Institute.
Luis Valenzuela was walking along Ejército Nacional Avenue shortly before 3:00 p.m. when he noticed approximately 20 agents from the National Migration Institute, along with members of the Mexico City Security Secretariat, carrying out arbitrary arrests.
“They started determining who might be, in their opinion, ‘illegal’ (…). They began asking motorcyclists and pedestrians for identification. Those who weren’t Mexican were interrogated further, and if they couldn’t prove their legal status in the country, they were put into one of these two vans with the National Migration Institute logo,” he told Latinus.
Valenzuela estimates that between 10 and 15 migrants were taken into custody in a matter of 20 minutes.
Lorena Cano, legal coordinator of the Legal Clinic at the Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI), stated in an interview with Latinus that the record of these raids in Mexico City is completely irregular.
“We started noticing these activities on social media, and our clients began calling us with great concern,” Cano commented. “Then we began receiving requests for legal representation because there were arrests and abuses.”
Cano pointed out that Mexico City allows the free movement of people in situations of human mobility and calls itself a sanctuary city, and that the raids have been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation.
Organizations dedicated to defending the rights of migrants, such as the Casa Refugiados Program, have spoken out against these actions.
“…we express our concern regarding the recent immigration operations carried out in different parts of Mexico City, which have resulted in the detention and transfer of people in contexts of human mobility,” the organization said in a statement released on its social media.
Source: latinus.us
