Venezuela’s first deportations have surprised immigrants in Mexico

The first deportation of Venezuelan migrants took hundreds of compatriots and other nationalities by surprise this Thursday.

Venezuelans have asked the US government to grant them an extension to allow their compatriots stranded in Tapachula to reach the northern border.

This Thursday, the Secretary of National Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorgas, warned Venezuelan immigrants that they will fail if they try to come to the United States irregularly and invited them to obtain one of the protection visas announced by the government.

Mayorgas expressed himself in this sense a day after the United States and Mexico sealed an agreement to grant 24,000 visas to Venezuelan nationals.

However, in Tapachula, immigrants from Venezuela and other countries announced that hundreds of people from Venezuela and from Colombia, Nicaragua and other countries were arriving with the intention of reaching the United States.

They prepare shelter

Given the possibility of Venezuelans returning, the XXI Century Migration Station, established by Mexico’s National Migration Agency for the temporary accommodation of migrants who cannot prove their regular immigration status, announced this Thursday that it is preparing to receive hundreds of migrants. People of Venezuela.

Joan Blanco of Venezuela reported EFE He lamented that “he is hopeless and uncertain because of the lack of information” and that the US government “has not set a deadline” for them to enter US territory.

“It affects us in every way, because we are already in Mexico, we had a free passage, now we don’t have it, they have closed it to us, we ask them to find a solution, because we are going to continue to move forward and complete the path to the United States”, he exposed.

Meanwhile, a Venezuelan immigrant, who preferred anonymity, said the news shocked them because he and his companions “come from a country with nothing and have embarked on a journey in search of a better future. Why are we going back to Venezuela?

Most of these Venezuelan migrants entered Mexico irregularly through the border crossings with Guatemala, bypassing immigration checkpoints in Central America and Mexico to reach Tapachula.

In Tapachula, in recent hours, migrants did not warn that a caravan was about to leave, because they did not know what to do, or that they were going to wait for more migrants to organize themselves, while agents from the National Migration Agency and the Mexican Army I completed operations in the center of Tapachula.

Regarding the new United States plan, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard explained that the undocumented Venezuelans being deported by the United States to Mexico had already passed through Mexican territory and were therefore not new immigrants.

“The most important thing” is allowing Venezuelans to carry out their paperwork remotely without having to “travel” to the US border, he stressed.

He also assured that the number of Venezuelans in Mexico already exceeds that of Central Americans, explaining that many have sought asylum in the country.

The U.S. program is similar to one already in place for citizens of Ukraine, which grants two-year temporary status to those with a U.S. sponsor.

The announcement by the United States comes amid an increase in the number of Venezuelan nationals at the Mexican border. From October 2021 to August this year, 150,000 Venezuelans have been apprehended at the US southern border, compared to 50,499 in the same period last year.