14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 9 October 2024 — The delay in the response to appointments through the CBP One application keeps Cubans Alexander Mori and Bárbara García stranded since August in Tapachula, Chiapas. “Several Venezuelans received the answer in four days, but I, who carried out the procedure two months ago, have not had an answer,” Mori tells 14ymedio. The migrant defense lawyer for José Luis Pérez tells this newspaper that there are at least a thousand Cubans in the same situation.
This 27-year-old from Havana says that he has carried out the procedure up to three times; the last one was on Thursday, September 26. “We are desperate, people come and go, but we are still here, without moving.”
Pérez says that Mori, like other migrants, made a mistake: they have to wait for a response after making the appointment. “Every attempt starts from scratch; they must be patient,” he urges.
During his stay in Tapachula, Mori met Bárbara García in the Miguel Hidalgo Central Park. Originally from Matanzas and 29 years old, she was arrested in a raid by Immigration agents on September 2 and admitted to the Siglo XXI migratory station. The Matancera was traveling with her father and a nephew, but while she was detained they received a response to her CBP One appointment and moved her to the International Guardhouse in San Ysidro, Tijuana.
“My family is already in Texas, they have managed to fulfill the dream, but I’m still here, waiting for an answer to the appointment,” he says. García spent 20 days locked up, “threatened with a deportation if she did not pay 1,000 dollars.” Her nephew was able to visit her after the National Institute of Migration (INM) granted him the multiple migratory form, a 20-day conditional stay permit that allowed him to travel to the border.
“One day the agents arrived, gave us a list and released us. I immediately completed the procedure and I am waiting for an answer,” he says.
The director of the Center for Human Dignity, Luis García Villagrán, told Diario del Sur that there are currently 45,000 migrants, most of them from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Cuba, stranded in Tapachula. The common denominator of these groups is “political and religious persecution, xenophobia, violence, insecurity, poverty and lack of opportunities.”
The parish priest of the municipality of Suchiate, Heyman Vázquez, attributes the increase in the migratory flow to the “delay” in the procedures. The religious leader denounced the lack of attention by the INM, which caused people to be exposed to gang violence.
“The State ignored the situation of violence in the region, as well as its obligation to investigate and sanction human rights violations,” says the parish priest. The “crimes of public agents” and Migration are widespread, both for “omissions and in collusion with criminal groups.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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