Mexico deports 65 Hondurans under new program
Mexico City, Aug 14, 2011 (Menafn - EFE via COMTEX) --Mexico deported 65 Hondurans last week under a new program that seeks to get migrants home safely and help them reintegrate into society, the Government Secretariat said.
The migrants, who were at the Siglo XXI immigration service station in Tapachula, a city in the southern state of Chiapas, were taken by land to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where they were registered in a social reinsertion and work program organized by their country's government, the secretariat said.
The pilot program started on Aug. 10, when the group traveled by land from Tapachula to Corinto, located on the border between Guatemala and Honduras, and then on to San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras.
"They were welcomed there by the Honduran deputy foreign minister, Alden Rivera," and taken to the Returned Migrants Assistance Center, where officials offered information on employment prospects, provided access to telephones and arranged for transportation home for the migrants, the secretariat said.
The program is based on the memorandum of understanding signed by the Mexican government with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in May 2006.
The orderly repatriation, the first of its kind involving migrants from Honduras, occurred in the wake of Honduran Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati's visit to Mexico earlier this month to discuss ways of improving the deportation process.
An investigation, meanwhile, has been opened into the death of a 19-year-old Guatemalan migrant on Aug. 7 in Tultitlan, a city in Mexico state, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, said.
"From the very start ... Commission personnel have been following this matter and working with the authorities, providing support that will help clear it up," the CNDH, Mexico's equivalent of an ombudsman's office, said in a statement released on Saturday.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rapporteur for migrant workers and their families Felipe Gonzalez wrapped up a visit to Mexico earlier this month.
The rights official toured Mexico, meeting with representatives of non-governmental organizations, officials, migrants and migrants' relatives.
The meetings shed light on detentions, violence and sexual aggression against women, as well as numerous cases of extortion and people trafficking over the past 10 years, Gonzalez said.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, is an organ of the Organization of American States.
At least 11,333 migrants, the majority of them from Central America, were kidnapped in Mexico between April and September 2010, the CNDH said in a report released in February.
Thousands of migrants, both Mexicans and foreigners, try to enter the United States each year via land routes from Mexico.
The trek is a dangerous one, with criminals and corrupt Mexican officials preying on the migrants.
Gangs kidnap, exploit and murder migrants, who are often targeted in extortion schemes, Mexican officials say.
An estimated 300,000 Central Americans undertake the dangerous journey across Mexico each year on their way to the United States.
Central American migrants follow a long route that takes them into Chiapas state, which is on the border with Guatemala, walking part of the way or riding aboard freight trains, buses and cargo trucks.
The flow of migrants has increased markedly in the northern and northeastern parts of Mexico since U.S. officials increased security along the border in the northwestern part of the country. EFE
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