Small Town in Southern Mexico Hosts Thousands of Migrants Maria Verza - Associated Press
go to original October 18, 2022

Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, arrive at a camp where Mexican authorities will arrange permits for their continued travel north, in San Pedro Tapanatepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. (Marco Ugarte/AP)

As migrants, especially Venezuelans, struggle to come to terms with a new U.S. policy discouraging border crossings, one small town in southern Mexico is unexpectedly playing host to thousands of migrants camped far from the U.S. border.

San Pedro Tapanatepec had 7,000 migrants, about 75% Venezuelans, when The Associated Press visited at the beginning of October. By Monday, Mayor Humberto Parrazales estimated the number had grown to 14,000. The AP could not independently verify that figure.

While many Venezuelans had planned to make their way to the U.S. border, the new U.S. policy says only those applying online, and arriving by air, will be admitted. Border crossers will simply be expelled. That leaves many camped out in five large tent shelters wondering what they’ll do next.

They while away the daytime heat with just a few electric fans to keep the temperature down.

San Pedro Tapanatepec is obviously not where they wanted to wind up. The heat-drenched town in Oaxaca state is only about 180 miles (300 kilometers) from the border with Guatemala. Many of the migrants had thought they forever left Guatemala behind on the long trek that took many of them from the Darian Gap in Panama, through Central America, to Mexico.

Since August, the town has served as a way-station, where migrants would wait for a few days while Mexican immigration authorities issued them a sort of transit pass that gave them time to make it to the U.S. border.

But Parrazales said the flow of that paperwork has slowed down, leaving many more migrants waiting here in an impoverished town ill-equipped to play host to so many people.

Read the rest at WSLS.com

Related: Catholics Work to Help Venezuelans Expelled to Mexico Under Title 42 (CNS)

Related: The Church Works With Save the Children to Help Migrant Children and Families in Mexico (Church of Latter-day Saints)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!