By Mie Hoejris Dahl
US and Mexican deterrence policies aimed at stemming the flow of migrants into the United States are leaving thousands of vulnerable people trapped in southern Mexico, where aid groups are unable to meet their growing humanitarian needs amid spiralling cartel-related violence.
Confronted by levels of violence they’re not equipped to handle, some aid groups told The New Humanitarian they’ve pulled back from the most dangerous areas and even avoid properly informing migrants about the risks they face out of fear of reprisals from organised crime.
Mexico is now among the top five countries hosting the highest number of new asylum seekers in the world, according to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR. In 2023 alone, it registered a record of nearly 141,000 requests. About 60% of the applications were made in Chiapas – the southern state bordering Guatemala that most migrants from Central and South America, as well as from other continents, cross to try to reach the United States.
In the past few years, Chiapas has been gripped by a turf war between the formerly dominant Sinaloa Cartel and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) – one of Mexico’s strongest criminal organisations. Alongside many other criminal groups, they are trying to assert their control over both the strategic drug routes and the booming migration industry.
With Chiapas under the de facto rule of the two cartels, migrants stranded in southern Mexico report daily extortions, kidnappings, threats, and harassment, including by law enforcement and border patrol officers.
As clashes between gangs intensified, homicides in the state jumped by more than 50% in the first three months of this year compared to the same period in 2023.
The escalation of violence means additional challenges for migrants who already lack food, places to stay, and sources of income.
A November 2023 needs assessment by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Mexico showed that nearly 32% of interviewees lived in shelters and about 25% on the streets. Nearly 29% said their families had only one meal a day. Access to vital supplies and services was limited, including: water and personal hygiene items; clothing, health services, and medication; and reliable information and legal support.
Addressing those needs has grown more and more difficult as humanitarians struggle to adjust to working in such an unsafe environment. In May, a man was killed right outside the IRC’s office in Tapachula – Chiapas’ second-largest city – causing fear and distress among staff.
“The team was very affected by it,” said Rafael Velásquez, the organisation’s country director in Mexico. “They are not prepared for this level of violence.”
‘Not even the jungle has been this difficult’
Tapachula is part of a migration corridor that begins about 20 kilometres further south, along the Suchiate river that separates Mexico from Guatemala. It has long been the most common crossing point for migrants making their way northwards – many after crossing the notorious Dárien Gap jungle route from South America. Between January and July, more than 285,000 people entered irregularly through Chiapas, more than twice the number for the same period in 2023.
This year, the ramping up of deterrence policies aimed at reducing the pressure on the US southern border has made the situation far worse, aid workers and migrants told The New Humanitarian.
Since January, the Mexican authorities have intensified their efforts by bussing migrants rounded up in northern Mexico and dropping them off in southern cities.
An election-year executive order in June from President Joe Biden allowing the temporary closure of the US border when ‘illegal’ crossings are high has further strained the humanitarian situation on Mexico’s southern border.
Corrupt security forces and the increased militarisation of the border make migrants especially vulnerable, according to local religious leaders and aid organisations. In early October, six people were killed and a dozen more wounded when Mexican soldiers opened fire on a truck carrying migrants north of Tapachula.
Sitting in suffocating heat on a concrete bench in a Tapachula square in May, Rosmeri (a Venezuelan woman whose last name is being withheld for safety reasons) fought back tears as she recounted how she and her family had been robbed earlier that morning.
A group of men had offered them transport north for the equivalent of $1– a deal that was too good to be true. Instead, they found themselves locked up in a yard with bars guarded by armed men, asked to pay “exit fees” of $30 per child and $60 per adult.
When the family said they didn’t have enough money to pay, the men took all the money they did have as well as one of their mobile phones and stamped their arms with a rooster – a symbol commonly used by the CJNG – before letting them go.
Rosmeri had tried to wash the stamp off but the black smudge remained. Migrants don’t know whether to keep the stamps – to show they have paid some extortion fees – or wipe it off in case a competing criminal group punishes them for ‘collaborating’ with a rival.
These kidnappings and extortions have become commonplace along Mexico’s southern border. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), both the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel engage in human trafficking, tax migrant smugglers, and routinely extort vulnerable migrants. The IRC needs assessment showed that half of the migrants surveyed didn’t feel safe in Mexico, and four in 10 had been victims of at least one crime while in the country.
But criminal groups aren’t the only ones targeting migrants.
Isaac Sánchez, a 25-year-old Venezuelan, cuts hair (for $2.50 per cut) and trims beards in a square in the Suchiate municipality near the riverbank. Speaking to The New Humanitarian in May, he recounted how – just the day before – the Guatemalan police had stolen his phone, about $90, and his scissors, adding: “The police said they would deport me if I didn’t give them money.”
Next to a checkpoint in Viva México, a village on the outskirts of the city of Tapachula, a group of young Venezuelan migrant men said they had all had similar experiences and that Mexico had been the worst part of their journey.
“Not even the jungle has been this difficult,” one of them said, referring to the Darién Gap – the perilous stretch of jungle connecting Colombia to Panama.
Aid access restrictions
As the situation spirals further downward, the few and often-underfunded aid groups operating in southern Mexico are increasingly having to restrict their work. At the IRC’s office in Tapachula, a map detailing violent incidents in the region serves as a chilling reminder of where not to go.
Ernesto Lorda, director for the north of Central America and Mexico at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said humanitarian organisations are failing to reach many people in need of protection. “Instead, they end up in the hands of organised crime,” he said.
A key issue, Lorda explained, is that international humanitarian law (IHL) doesn’t apply when dealing with organised crime. “We have no framework to guide us,” he said.
IHL establishes the right of aid groups to deliver assistance during armed conflicts and grants them protection to engage with armed groups to negotiate access. However, organised crime and gang violence often don’t meet the legal threshold of an armed conflict under international law, so the application of IHL in situations like southern Mexico remains hazy at best. This leaves agencies unsure of their immunity when working in areas controlled by gangs, and interactions with these groups – from the states’ perspectives – could be seen as criminal.
“Legal frameworks are in place, but, in practice, states hardly show any commitment to accountability efforts. Impunity is so intertwined with economic, political, and social practices.”
Jorge Peniche, a lawyer from the Guernica 37 Centre, an international organisation that works with victims of rights abuse in Mexico
“Unless we are talking about an active war zone, it is often hard to get recognition of migration as a humanitarian topic,” said Velásquez, the IRC country director. “The system is old and insufficient. We need to revise [the] protocols.”
In other corners of the country, international aid is even more restricted than in Chiapas. In the states of Michoacán, Sinaloa, and Guerrero, it is the local organisations that are being left to do the most dangerous work.
In addition to reducing where they will operate due to the spreading violence, International aid groups feel compelled to restrict their assistance in other ways too.
Aid groups are supposed to inform and warn migrants about the risks they face, but two humanitarian workers, who requested to speak anonymously due to the sensitivity of the topic, said they try to avoid using words like organised crime, or cartels, or even slang terms for people smugglers like polleros or coyotes. If cartel or gang informants hear them using such terms, they risk repercussions that could compromise their ability to work in that area.
“We know that criminal groups have informants operating around the migrants. That makes our work with migrants harder, and we have to be careful to make sure [the criminal groups] don’t feel threatened,” explained Velásquez.
Not even migrant shelters are safe from the vigilant eyes of organised crime. In Mexico City, gangs have reportedly infiltrated shelters, and Velásquez said the same is now happening in Tapachula.
But tackling insecurity and seeking justice is no easy task in Mexico, where the perpetrators of the extortion and kidnapping are rarely sought, let alone apprehended.
“Legal frameworks are in place, but, in practice, states hardly show any commitment to accountability efforts,” said Jorge Peniche, a lawyer from the Guernica 37 Centre, an international organisation that works with victims of rights abuse in Mexico. “Impunity is so intertwined with economic, political, and social practices,” he added.
In Suchiate, international and local organisations, as well as churches, try to help migrants with some food and water, or by giving them access to electricity to charge their phones. They also hand out maps for them to have a better sense of distances across the vast country.
But such efforts are far from enough, and the aid groups are simply overwhelmed by the scale of the ever-rising needs. There is little more they can do without increased funding from the international community and greater support from the Mexican government.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, blamed the Mexican authorities for supporting flawed US migration policies. She said it is this “deterrence strategy” that is exposing migrants to violence and crime: “They throw migrants under the bus.”
For this article, The New Humanitarian used transportation provided by the International Rescue Committee and by the Chiapas State Commission for Human Rights. Edited by Daniela Mohor.
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The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.
