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  • Standing at the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

  • Up there on the bridge,

  • there's a normal border crossing with migration; people stamping passports, but

  • you go down these wobbly stairs, you notice that right under the bridge these

  • guys are trafficking people across the border, technically illegally.

  • You can't tell that there's been an immigration crackdown here, but there has.

  • And it was the U.S. that paid for it.

  • These guys are doing it under the noses of immigration

  • officials who clearly don't care that much.

  • You only start to feel this

  • crackdown when you start moving north, where you run into a new network of

  • military infrastructure and checkpoints meant to stop migrants.

  • But this crackdown was never meant to keep Central Americans out of Mexico, it was

  • meant to keep them out of Texas.

  • In 2014 the United States sent an influx of

  • money to Mexico, helping them militarize and fortify their southern border region.

  • To understand why, you have to look at this chart: the red line represents the

  • number of Mexican migrants apprehended while they're crossing into the United States

  • and the green line is for non-Mexican migrants. Look at 2014: that's when the

  • number of non-Mexican migrants outnumbered Mexican migrants for the

  • very first time. What pushed this number up were the migrants coming from

  • Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. And these people fleeing from Central America aren't just

  • looking for jobs, they're running away.

  • So, there's a war going on in Central America

  • right now, it's actually not just one war it's a ton of micro wars,

  • "Unbelievable violence." "Nearly one homicide an hour".

  • "Three of the five highest homicide countries in the world:

  • Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador."

  • "Carved up the city into warring factions".

  • Residents of these towns are

  • at major risk of dying and so people are fleeing.

  • While riding with U.S. Border Patrol on the Texas border, I watched them apprehend a 22 year old and

  • his son as they just made the three-week journey up through Mexico from Honduras.

  • These refugees walk into Mexico mostly hoping to make it to the U.S.

  • Many come here, to this town called Tapachula, just north of the border where they can look

  • for a migrant shelter to lie low and get support and at this vulnerable point in

  • their journey, many don't want to show their face on camera. And there were

  • these threats just constantly came and came and came to me and then one day I

  • just said the hell with this I'm gone. Mm-hmm. I burned my little Rancho and and

  • I took off at two o'clock in the morning.

  • The exodus out of Central America came

  • to a head in 2014, when the U.S. saw a huge spike in the

  • number of Central American kids and teens arriving to the border without a parent.

  • "It is a huge humanitarian crisis on the border right now".

  • "52,000 unaccompanied children have been caught at the US border with Mexico: double the

  • number recorded last year". "Children from Honduras traveling into Guatemala, then

  • Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande, and just now arriving in Texas."

  • As soon as it became clear that this year's migration to the border was different than in past

  • years, I directed FEMA to coordinate our response at the border. Obama declared an

  • urgent humanitarian situation at the border.

  • He discussed it with Mexican president Peña Nieto.

  • Peña Nieto walked away from that meeting and immediately implemented a policy called

  • "El Programa Frontera Sur", the southern border program. "And earlier this week

  • Mexico announced a series of steps that they're gonna take on their southern

  • border to help stem the tide".

  • For Peña Nieto, the plan had two main objectives:

  • In short, the plan was supposed to make

  • life better and safer for both migrants and those living in the border region,

  • which includes Mexico's most impoverished state, Chiapas.

  • This migrant protection plan for the southern border had been in the works for years, but it

  • was rushed into implementation apparently in response to American pressure.

  • Many of the long-term plans that were meant to give migrants legal

  • support and protection fell away. Instead, the implementation focused almost

  • entirely on enforcement and security.

  • "What's easiest to do, I think, is enforcement because

  • you already have the infrastructure set up. Like it's harder to create jobs, right,

  • than it is to hire more immigration agents to detain people."

  • Mexico's quick solution to this was to militarize, to start raiding buses to

  • start putting up checkpoints, to start cracking down on Central Americans who

  • are coming into their country. A perfect symbolic representation of this are

  • these huge multi-agency complexes that they built in order to house the

  • immigration officials alongside the Army, and the Marines, and the Federal Police.

  • Mexico fortified its southern border region and to help in the effort, the

  • U.S. sent an influx of money and equipment, using resources from an

  • existing security partnership it had with Mexico, dating back to 2007.

  • This partnership was originally created to combat drug trafficking and organized crime.

  • The money was used here for things like inspection equipment, k9 teams,

  • observation towers, training for immigration enforcement officials,

  • communication networks to support enforcement activities, and gear to

  • collect biometric data like fingerprints and photos of detained migrants.

  • In short, the U.S. helped militarize the southern border region of Mexico.

  • The U.S. got what it was looking for.

  • "In part because of strong efforts by Mexico

  • including at its southern border, we've seen those numbers reduced back to much

  • more manageable levels."

  • Apprehensions on the Mexican side went up and people

  • arriving to Texas or other parts of the U.S. border went down, but this was all

  • temporary. The number jumped back up in 2016, so the crackdown isn't actually

  • stopping people from getting to the United States, but it is making their

  • journey much more dangerous.

  • Behind me is the train that Central Americans take to get from here in

  • southern Mexico, up to the border of the United States. If it were 2014 this area

  • would be completely packed with migrants.

  • Migration officials targeted this train.

  • They started conducting extensive raids and the train companies hired guards,

  • increasing the speeds of the trains and installing concrete posts and walls to

  • make it harder for people to jump aboard and now gangs are a constant threat to

  • the few travelers that remain.

  • Here are the main routes that migrants took to

  • get to the United States: they mainly follow the train routes. These paths were well

  • supported with migrant shelters and clinics and most importantly large

  • groups of other migrants, making it less likely that people will be robbed or

  • assaulted. Migrants often don't know where their next meal will come from or

  • where they're gonna sleep each night. They depend on this network of usually

  • church-sponsored shelters as they move north. The 2014 crackdown targeted these

  • routes, looking for migrants in popular places like shelters and train stops.

  • So migrants moving north have shifted into unfamiliar, unsupported routes that

  • multiply the dangers that they are already subject to on this journey.

  • Pushing these refugees away from well trodden routes and into the shadows has

  • made them more vulnerable to assaults by criminals and gangs in this region.

  • During this time the U.S. Border Patrol started putting out public service

  • announcements, about how dangerous the journey through Mexico had become.

  • This, in spite of the fact that U.S. policy contributed to those risks.

  • All of the shelter directors I talked to have noticed an uptick in crimes against

  • migrants since this crackdown. A study by dozens of migration organizations in

  • Mexico found that, of the 5,824 investigations into crimes against

  • migrants, less than 1% had led to any sort of sentence.

  • And many crimes go

  • unreported altogether. There's not a lot of trust in the Mexican justice system

  • for migrants.

  • Most migrants are now left on their own,

  • navigating this remote region where both gangs and corruption-prone

  • police are looking for ways to profit off vulnerable migrants.

  • But perhaps the most egregious offence of the Mexican state in this crackdown, comes down to

  • what they didn't do for these people entering their country. When a Mexican

  • immigration official detains a migrant, that officer is required to inform them

  • that they have the right to ask for refugee status or asylum if they're

  • fleeing for their lives. Everyone I talked to said that isn't happening.

  • There were 40,000 children who entered into Mexico in 2016, and these children

  • aren't looking for jobs, they're not smuggling drugs, they're looking for protection.

  • Of the 40,000 that came here, only 1% applied for asylum.

  • That's a dangerously low number for a country that has said that it protects asylum seekers.

  • Migrants who feel a threat to their lives in their own

  • country have to fill out an application and submit it to an agency that has the

  • power to grant asylum or refugee status in Mexico. This allows them to avoid

  • being deported, to stay in the country, but this agency that's in charge of

  • processing these applications only had 15 caseworkers dedicated to interviewing

  • these applicants and while applications are on pace to be 12 times what they

  • were in 2013, this group's budget only grew 5% during the crackdown.

  • The year the southern border program was implemented, Mexico detained around a

  • 119,000 Central Americans. It granted refugee status to

  • only 460 of them, not even a half a percent. That same year

  • Mexico started deporting a lot more Central Americans, so the southern border

  • program made Mexico a lot better at detaining and deporting people, but it

  • definitely didn't make Mexico a safer place for refugees like it said it would.

  • Now let's get one thing straight, Mexico has the right and the sovereignty to

  • fortify its borders and to control who's coming in and out.

  • That is their right as a sovereign nation.

  • And some will wonder why is it Mexico's

  • problem to deal with you know the problems and challenges of

  • citizens of another country? The problem is Mexico has signed all of

  • the international conventions that promise that they will take care of

  • asylum seekers or refugees and give them the legal protection so that they can feel safe.

  • A report by the Migration Policy institute found that in 2014,

  • The U.S. deported just 3 of every 100

  • unaccompanied children that it apprehended on the border. Mexico on the

  • other hand deported 77 for every 100 kids it apprehended. And yet when

  • thousands of unaccompanied children arrived at Texas' border in 2014 the U.S.

  • turned to Mexico to handle the delicate and difficult work of screening and

  • protecting these refugees fleeing for their lives. The U.S. is paying Mexico to

  • do its dirty work, knowing full well that doing this will result in a much more

  • dangerous situation for refugees.

  • It drove them into the shadows, worsening their vulnerabilities.

  • And in most cases,

  • deporting them back to the violent places from which they came.

  • One of the questions I know I'm gonna get a ton is:

  • What is the name of this waterfall?

  • Southern Mexico's full of a lot of very beautiful scenery,

  • and I got to see a lot of it as I was traipsing around the region, reporting this story.

  • But this waterfall, it's called El Chiflón and it's in the state of Chiapas in Southern Mexico.

  • It ended up being one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen,

  • in all of my Borders reporting this summer.

  • Especially once I got the drone up in the air and saw it from above.

  • El Chiflón, in Chiapas. It's a beautiful place.

Standing at the border between Guatemala and Mexico.

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