Haitians saturate shelters and immigration offices in northern Mexico
MONTERREY - Some 2,000 Haitian migrants arrived since Monday and throughout Tuesday in Monterrey, capital of the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, which has caused a saturation of shelters and the offices of the National Institute of Migration (INM) in the city, Mexican authorities reported Tuesday.
In addition, according to reports, two other caravans are heading to the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, in Tamaulipas.
Faced with this situation, Luckner Mercredi, president of the Foundation for the Reconstruction of Haiti, informed Efe that the organization is collecting a list of all migrants to request help from the Mexican government.
"We want to know the legal status of each one and see how we can support them so that they have adequate space to stay and have food and everything they need," said Mercredi.
He stressed that they need all possible information on the real number of migrants in order to present a plan to solve what is already considered a humanitarian crisis.
"Until now we do not have a real number and for that reason we are looking at a way to ask the authorities of the Nuevo León government for help in order to have control of the migrants who are now in this state," he added.
Mercredi attributed the departure of thousands of citizens from his country to the recent hurricanes that destroyed southern Haiti, the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that left more than 2,000 deaths and 12,000 victims in August, and the shooting of President Jovenel Moïse , last July, which caused political instability.
There is no capacity to feed all the refugees at Casa Indi
Most Haitians have gathered since Monday at Casa Indi, a Catholic church shelter where some 800 migrants are staying, despite the fact that the shelter's dining room barely has the capacity to feed 400 people a day.
The priest Felipe de Jesús Sánchez, responsible for the place, reported that now they need donations to attend the massive flow of migrants, a phenomenon that had not been registered in Monterrey.
Since the morning of this Tuesday, hundreds of Haitians also concentrated at the INM headquarters with the aim of regularizing their legal stay in the country.
Jesús Sánchez reported that they expect the arrival in the next few hours of hundreds of migrants who left Tapachula, in the southern state of Chiapas, bound for the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa to try to cross into the United States.
According to the priest, the current number of migrants at Casa Indi could double in the next 48 hours.
The crisis caused by the thousands of citizens from Haiti to Monterrey adds to what is happening in the neighboring state of Coahuila where the authorities of Ciudad Acuña and Piedras Negras do not have the capacity to attend shelters or provide food and medicine to migrants.
On Monday, about 13,000 irregular migrants, mostly from Haiti, were held by US authorities in a makeshift camp under the international bridge that links the Rio (Texas) with Mexico's Ciudad Acuña, in Coahuila.
The region is dealing with a historic migratory flow, with 147,000 undocumented persons detected in Mexico from January to August, triple that of 2020, and a record of 212,000 undocumented persons detained in July alone by the Customs Office and the Border Patrol.