14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 20 April 2022 — The Government of the Mexican state of Coahuila, bordering the United States, this Wednesday integrated elements of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), a body created in 2013 to combat crime, with the Migrant Containment Plan, with which seeks to prevent undocumented immigrants crossing the Rio Grande.
The operation began in the Braulio Fernández park, in Ciudad Acuña, through which dozens of migrants pass daily to Del Río (Texas). “This site is one of the key points,” a rescuer from Grupo Beta tells 14ymedio, which is used by “Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans” to cross to US soil.
“In mid-March, 1,500 migrants arrived in the US in one day. They returned 800. And a wave of foreigners is expected before the end of this month,” estimates the rescuer. “The plan is to stop the groups before they reach the banks of the river.”
The Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) registered the arrival of 80,000 Cubans in the US between October 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022. And in Mexico, on April 16 Migration reported the arrest of 15,907 people originating from the Island. “The figures are from this year, in less than four months, about 1,800 of these arrests have been registered in Coahuila,” the source from the Grupo Beta shares.
The rescuer assures that at all times “the human rights of migrants will be respected and they will only be prevented from crossing the Rio Grande,” but he did not know how to respond to the carrying of weapons, visible in the images posted by the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office.
The Migrant Containment Plan is among the agreements reached on April 14 by the Governor of Coahuila, Miguel Riquelme, with the Texas Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, who at the beginning of the month announced the placement of barbed wire in the lower areas of the river Bravo to contain the migration.
Riquelme, on the other hand, opted for the deployment of 200 agents, including armed municipal and state police officers and members of the AIC, who hide in the undergrowth of the Braulio Fernández park, lying in wait for migrants who manage to evade the patrols located in the streets surrounding the river. As soon as the operation began, six Haitians were arrested and handed over to Immigration.
Close to this area. six days ago, Grupo Beta warned Daniela Anaya, a 26-year-old Cuban with her 7-year-old son Dismel Arce, not to cross the tributary to the United States due to the strength of the current and the danger it represented for them.
And it was here in the Braulio Fernández park where Guillermo Alan Matos was found in shock after losing his wife Alexa Nadine, a Uruguayan national, and his son Ismael. They both drowned.
Wilmer Mantos, who is heading to Piedras Negras, and spent 37 days in the migration center of Acayucan, Veracruz, says that the Government of Mexico “wants to pass us off as criminals, when what we are doing is fleeing from a dictatorship, but they’re going to stop these people.”
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