With New Enforcement Rules, Mexicans Fear Prospect of Refugee Camps Along U.S.-Mexico Border Mark Stevenson - The Associated Press
go to original February 22, 2017

The left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) staged a piece of performance art as a protest against US President Donald Trump. (Ruptly TV)

Mexicans fear deportee and refugee camps could be popping up along their northern border under the Trump administration’s plan to start deporting to Mexico all Latin Americans and others who entered the U.S. illegally through this country.

Previous U.S. policy called for only Mexican citizens to be sent to Mexico. Migrants known as “OTMs” — Other Than Mexicans — got flown back to their homelands.

Now, under a sweeping rewrite of enforcement policies announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, migrants might be dumped over the border into a violence-plagued land where they have no ties while their asylum claims or deportation proceedings are heard in the United States. U.S. officials didn’t say what Mexico would be expected to do with them.

The only consensus so far in Mexico about the new policies of President Donald Trump is that the country isn’t remotely prepared.

“Not in any way, shape or form,” said the Rev. Patrick Murphy, a priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in the border city of Tijuana, which currently houses about 55 Haitian immigrants. They were part of wave of thousands who swarmed to the border in the closing months of the Obama administration in hopes of getting asylum in the U.S.

Tijuana was overwhelmed, and while the government did little, a string of private Christian groups pitched in to open shelters with improvised bedding, tents and sanitary facilities. Donated food kept the Haitians going.

Mexicans quake at the thought of handling not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a border region already struggling with drug gangs and violence.

Read the rest at The Star

Related: Here Are the Major Elements of Trump’s New Immigration Policies (Boston.com)

Related: Trump's New Deportation Plan Is a Worst-Case Scenario for Mexico (Pulse)

Related: Donald Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Likely to Bring Lawsuit Flood (Live Mint)

Related: Rights Groups Criticize U.S. 'Witch Hunt' of 11 Million Foreigners (The New Paper)

Related: ‘Not My President’s Concern’: Mexican Migrant Commits Suicide After Deported from US (Daily Pakistan)

Related: Trump’s New Immigration Rules Are Almost as Far-Fetched as His Border Wall (Quartz)

Related: Mexican Migrants Signal They Prefer Detention to Deportation (WSJ.com)

Related: Migrants Increasingly Forced to Fight Own Battles Against Deportation (Latin American Herald Tribune)

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