Federal Police arrest hundreds of women, men, and children of a migrant caravan in Chiapas

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Some 3,000 migrants were walking in caravans on the road when the agents urged the groups that were separated to rest and regroup to keep moving forward. But when these people gathered to recover their strength, the agents took the opportunity to stop them.

Pijijiapan, Mexico, April 22 (AP) .- Migrants and federal police detained hundreds of migrants traveling in caravans on Monday in Chiapas, southern Mexico. Men, women, and children were taken by force and climbed against their will to official vehicles.

As reported by journalists of The Associated Press, there were two operations that took place almost at the entrance to the town of Pijijiapan afternoon.

The migrants would have been detained by force. Photo: AP

Some 3,000 migrants were walking in caravans on the road when the agents urged the groups that were separated to rest and regroup to keep moving forward. But when these people gathered to recover their strength, the agents took the opportunity to stop them.

A migrant puts on the socks he left behind when his group fled Mexican immigration agents running from the highway to the brush in Pijijiapan, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Photo: Moisés Castillo, AP.

Security forces forced adults and children into the vans. The women and children cried and cried disconsolately.

The migrants were then taken to buses to, presumably, begin the procedures for their return to their countries.

The operatives on Monday are the biggest that has news in recent weeks. On Friday, the local press reported a series of arrests in the municipality of Mapastepec, where thousands of people were waiting for a response from the authorities to regularize their immigration status.

The National Institute of Migration (INM) has not answered repeated AP requests for information on operations and arrests, but the National Human Rights Commission said it had interviewed more than 200 people arrested in Mapastepec.

In its last communiqué on Friday, the INM estimated that 5,336 migrants are being served in shelters or migrant stations in Chiapas. In that press release he added that more than 1,500 of them were “waiting to be returned”.

On Sunday the National Human Rights Commission raised the number of migrants in the state to more than 7,500 among those who were detained, those housed in shelters and those who were in movement, and urged the authorities to make an adequate census, especially of minors, and to give them due attention.

Several thousand arrived in Mexico in a caravan mainly from Honduras in recent weeks. In the state there were already groups of previous caravans made up of Central Americans, as well as Cubans and Africans.

Source: sinembargo, ap

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