JUAN GONZÃ LEZ: Well, Carolina Jime'nez, I wanted to ask you most when we associate in the news African refugees or migrants, it's usually to Europe across the Mediterranean, which is obviously a much shorter trip than this trip that the African migrants who end up in Mexico are taking. Is it your sense that as the European Union has sought to crack down and prevent African migration, that this has had an effect of forcing Africans to take this much longer route across the Atlantic Ocean through South America and up through Central America to try to get to a country that can provide them refuge?
CAROLINA JIMÃ"degreesNEZ: We believe so. Unfortunately, there is a global trend when it comes to, you know, enforcing more restrictive migration policies, and Europe is not an exception. Now, when we compare the data, I mean, if we see the number of African migrants coming into Mexico from January to June 2018 and we see the numbers in 2019 from January to June this year, we see a twenty-eighty percent increase in the number of people coming, mainly from Cameroon, the DRC, Angola, Eritrea, etc. So, clearly, migrants are, you know, forced, basically, to take much longer and much more dangerous routes to be able to reach safety. So this is a trend that is likely to continue as we see restrictive immigration policies being implemented in Europe, in the U.S., in Australia, etc.
AMY GOODMAN: What caused the initial protests in Chiapas?
CAROLINA JIMÃ"degreesNEZ: Until recently, when migrants from Africa came to Mexico, they were given the choice to regularize or to seek asylum in Mexico. And what this implied in practice is that they were given a document, a notice, that allowed them to move freely into Mexico and, therefore, to travel north. Without any explanation, the Mexican government changed this policy in July this year, clearly due to the pressure they are receiving from the U.S. to crack down on migrants. And now they are forced, basically, to leave Mexico only through Mexico's southern border. This means they have to go to Guatemala if they want to leave Mexico. They are unable to move north.
Now, this change in policy, obviously, you know, has a negative impact on their plans, on their individual choice to choose the place where they could seek asylum. And this is what created the situation that you were describing earlier. I mean, they decided to protest. Unfortunately, there were clashes with security forces. What was a peaceful protest became a violent one, because there was repression, and they couldn't continue the protest. But the change in policy toward African migrants is actually reflective of a broader trend in Mexico's immigration policy, a trend that implies ensuring that migrants that come to Mexico are not able to travel north and seek asylum in the U.S. And this is a very sad situation in which we see one country in this case, Mexico, basically complying with the enforcement policy of another country, the U.S.
JUAN GONZÃ LEZ: And I wanted to ask you about that specifically and the policies under President LÃ pez Obrador, the pressure that the Trump administration has put on LÃ pez Obrador, and also the expectations that people had that he would have a more enlightened policy when it came to immigration and the immigration crackdown from the U.S. Your sense of what the pressures are on the current Mexican administration and how they're responding?
CAROLINA JIMÃ"degreesNEZ: Well, LÃ pez Obrador came to power with a promise that he was going to implement humane immigration policies in Mexico. And, of course, there were expectations that he will comply with those promises. Unfortunately, you know, due to pressure from the U.S. government, something that we all saw in the news in the month of June, when President Trump basically threatened Mexico with imposing tariffs if Mexico didn't do more enforcement, the narrative that President Obrador had had until then changed.
And what has happened is that Mexico has been forced or, has actually decided to give in, this pressure, not only to implement a very strong border enforcement, both in the south and in the northern border, and it is known that the government has sent more than 6,000 troops, mainly from members of the National Guard, a new security force, that shouldn't be doing any migration management tasks, and also implementing the so-called Remain in Mexico policy, which implies that people who seek asylum in the U.S. at the border are sent back to Mexico to wait for their applications to be heard.
So, I think the trend is very clear. I mean, we did have expectations that this new administration will implement more humane and more rights-based migration policies, but the reality is that it's complying with what the Trump administration has requested. And very sadly, migrants and asylum seekers were the bargaining chip of those trade negotiations, that ended up forcing the Mexican government to cooperate on enforcement and not to cooperate on promoting a regional migration system that could be focused on people and not on trade.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to end with an African migrant who took part in a recent protest outside an immigration office in Chiapas.
AFRICAN MIGRANT: [translated] We are here. We're still here. It has been 10 days, and we're demanding to be given a pass to cross through Mexico. But there are no solutions. We are suffering repression from the police here. The National Guard is here beating us, kicking pregnant women and children.
AMY GOODMAN: Your final comment, Carolina Jime'nez?
CAROLINA JIMÃ"degreesNEZ: We really wish to see a debate on migration that is both efficient for governments, I mean, that understands a debate that takes into consideration that governments have needs and priorities, etc., but that is rights-based. If we could see countries cooperating in terms of human rights, when it comes to protected people's human rights, the way we see countries and governments cooperating when it comes to enforcement, I think we would be in a much better place. Mexico has international obligations that it needs to fulfill when it comes to protecting people's rights to seek asylum and free movely or, free movement.
AMY GOODMAN: Carolina Jime'nez, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Americas deputy director for research at Amnesty International, speaking to us from Mexico City.
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