A court gives Immigration ten days to grant permanent residency to Ghislayne Jiménez Moret, Luis García Ramirez, and Otmara Arencibia Bustamante.
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, June 25, 2025 — The Cubans Ghislayne Jiménez Moret, Luis García Ramirez and Otmara Arencibia Bustamante began a hunger strike this Monday in front of the headquarters of the National Institute for Migration (INM) in Tapachula, Chiapas. The migrants blame the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (COMAR) for delaying their asylum procedures.
“We will be here for as long as it takes,” says Luis García Ramirez, who left the island last October. The lack of documents has limited the possibilities for this young person to find a well-paid job. “It’s very difficult because they don’t accept you for any job,” he says.
García Ramírez tells this newspaper that because of their appointments with Migration, they have lost job opportunities. “They keep you there for five hours; they don’t attend to you, and then they return you home without your process advancing.”
Otmara Arencibia Bustamante, diagnosed with breast cancer, tells this newspaper that she started the process five months ago. Despite “getting the eight signatures required” by COMAR to conduct a final interview, “they don’t tell you” when it will be held. The woman showed the Amparo [protective order] 957/25 to which she resorted to expedite the procedure, but she still hasn’t received refugee status.
A source revealed that COMAR in Tapachula “has no operational staff, translators or interviewers”
The delay has affected her income; the little that she receives from family members helps her to survive in Tapachula. “I would like to have papers so that I can work,” she says. “If I don’t have papers from Mexico, they won’t let me work.” Arencibia Bustamante says that, despite having a unique key of registration of temporary population (CURP)*, there have been sites indicating that “it is not sufficient” to get a job.
Currently, COMAR’s headquarters in Tapachula is only providing a CURP and scheduling appointments to have a final interview with the migrant to decide whether he or she can be a beneficiary of refuge. The migration process normally involves several formalities and takes a few months. During this period, a work permit is obtained while it is decided if the applicant can become a refugee, but at present this process is not being respected by the institution in the face of an influx of migrants.
Attorney José Luis Pérez points out to 14ymedio that this group of Cubans has faced apathy from the authorities. The lawyer confirmed that the Fourth District Court “gave the INM ten days to respond to its procedure of permanent resistance.”.
A source from Migration, who requested anonymity, revealed that COMAR is facing restructuring. “There is no operational staff, translators or interviewers in Chiapas,” he said. “At the moment there are hundreds of migrants in limbo. Procedures are taking up to a year.”
El Colectivo de Monitoreo-Frontera Sur denounced the accelerated institutional deterioration that directly affects thousands of migrants and asylum seekers on the border between Mexico and Guatemala.
The organization pointed out to Diario del Sur that due to the deterioration, “COMAR’s operational capacity has been reduced, in addition to the existence of a backlog in the humanitarian flights of the INM and forced evictions without minimum guarantees, which reflects a migration policy based on omission, criminalization and abandonment.
* CURP stands for Clave Única de Registro de Poblacíon para Extranjeros, or Unique Key of Registration of Foreign Population.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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