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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2007 
Mexico Deports Stranded Migrants
 BBC News
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| | Migrants take huge risks in their bid to travel north. |
Hundreds of illegal immigrants have been deported from Mexico after they became stranded when a train route through the country was closed down.
Up to 7,000 people - mostly from Guatemala and Honduras - got stuck in southern Mexico when a rail link to the US ceased operating.
US train operators Genesee & Wyoming Inc (GWI) closed the line because of damage caused by a hurricane in 2005.
The authorities said that around 350 people had been deported so far.
More deportations are planned but some of those who were stranded began walking along the now disused railway to continue their journey.
Hurricane damage
However many of the migrants had begun to live in tents to the east of the Mexican city of Villahermosa.
Central American immigrants are known to cross Mexico's southern border illegally on their way to the US, often riding on train roofs or stowing away in carriages.
In June, GWI revealed plans to shut the rail link down over a four-week period.
It said Hurricane Stan in October 2005 destroyed or damaged around 70 bridges and washed out segments of track in the state of Chiapas.
The company blamed the uncertainty of reconstruction of the rail line and falling passenger numbers for the decision to close down the route.
Thousands Deported in Southern Mexico
Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
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Mexico City - The closure of an American-run railroad in Mexico stranded thousands of U.S.-bound Central American migrants near the Guatemala border and many of them were deported Wednesday by immigration authorities.
Some camped along rail lines waiting for trains that will never come. Others tried to walk hundreds of miles to the next working rail line and some turned themselves in to Mexican authorities.
The government sent hundreds of federal police and soldiers Tuesday to clear out the migrants, who for decades have hopped freight cars on the Chiapas-Mayab railway, the Mexican rail link closest to the Guatemalan border.
In late July, the Connecticut-based Genesee & Wyoming Inc. withdrew from a 30-year concession to operate the line.
"They're hungry, they're tired, they're thirsty, they have no money, so they are surrendering," said Guatemalan Consul Rogelio Mendez in the railhead town of Tenosique, near the Guatemalan border.
But Mendez said Central American migrants continued to stream into Tenosique and he said thousands were camped along rail lines, waiting for trains that will never come.
Mexico's National Immigration Institute did not respond to requests for comment. Central American consulates said extra buses had been contracted to transport deportees from immigration detention centers to the border.
Thousands more migrants were stuck at the town of Ariaga in neighboring Chiapas state, and Salvadoran Consul Nelson Cuellar said many had started walking toward a rail line in Coatzacoalcos, almost 300 miles away.
"That is a marathon walk" through countryside where the threat of being assaulted or robbed is constant, he said.
The railroad's closure may lead more migrants to hire smugglers, who often transport them in trucks. Police recently found several trucks filled with people crammed into hidden compartments, often without adequate air or water.
Franciscan brother Juan Pablo Chavez Vargas, who runs a shelter for migrants in Tenosique, said smugglers and others who profit from the flow of migrants have encouraged them to keep coming.
"They are telling them, 'The train will come, just wait. The train will come,'" Chavez Vargas said.
The government says it hopes the railway will be running again under another operator by mid-2008.
Chiapas-Mayab spokeswoman Jeanette Rosado said damage to railway tracks caused by a 2005 hurricane forced Genesee & Wyoming to pull out. She also said rail workers had been assaulted by migrants or gangs of thugs, while the train-hopping migrants delayed operations and cost the company money.
"It is not the same, pulling a normal train or pulling it with 300 people riding on top," Rosado said. |
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