Name: Mexico's migrant crackdown I FT Features
Uploaded: 2020-03-12T07:11:50.000Z
Duration: 13 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Like tens of thousands of Central Americans every month,

The biggest challenge used to be getting across the US border.

But now, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has

made it increasingly tough even to get into Mexico.

Since June, after Donald Trump threatened

to impose tariffs on all Mexican exports,

There has been a more than 75 per cent drop

in the number of migrants making it into the US.

But the Mexico-Guatemala border is hard to police.

It runs through mountains, jungles, and rivers

for nearly 900km, and is full of clandestine crossings.

I travelled along it to see the impact of López

keeps driving people like Sergio to leave

when the chances of success have narrowed dramatically.

And to find whether Mexico's southern border

is becoming a proxy for Trump's border wall.

Breaking right now, everyone, President Trump

saying that the US is prepared and is at this moment in time

preparing to impose a five per cent tariff on all goods

doesn't start to do more to combat the migrant crisis

Central American migrants fleeing poverty and violence

but many use them just to travel unhindered through Mexico

Washington has gotten tougher, signing deals

with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to force migrants

to seek asylum there first, not in the US.

and the pressure is on Mexico to stay tough as next year's US

Mr López Obrador knows that any misstep on the issue

of migration could blow up into a bilateral crisis.

in the shoe of the Mexico-US relationship

for the rest of the Trump administration and probably

is a very sensitive issue in the United States.

And it's suddenly becoming a sensitive issue in Mexico.

He regularly hails Mexicans who migrated to the US

in past decades and send back record remittances

But he's put the need to protect Mexico's relations with the US

Despite the dangers and increasing difficulties,

the people smugglers are still finding ways to make a profit.

Here in the remote highlands of Guatemala,

Alex is a coyote, and he's been smuggling people to the US

Alex charges $7,500 and says he makes a profit of about 600

But that's after paying $800 per person to a drug cartel

But his job in his shop only pays $5 a day

and he's only been able to muster $1,800.

If he doesn't pay in two months, it will belong to Alex.

While Sergio was setting out from the town of Cuilco

along this bumpy single track road headed for one of scores

of informal border crossings high in the mountains,

another migrant family was just crossing into Mexico.

to flee from Honduras after their 18-year-old son was

murdered and their home burned to the ground by local gangs.

used to be across the Suchiate River that makes up

by immigration officials something that's

The Marine Martinez family is trying a different route,

and they are terrified, running into the bushes

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Mexico's migrant crackdown I FT Features

tough

boost

crisis

poverty