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Mexico’s President Orders Military Deployment in Response to Immigrant Caravan

López Obrador ordena despliegue militar ante avance de caravana migrante

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The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, affirmed on Wednesday that “it is normal” for the Military to be deployed on the borders in the face of the advance of the migrant caravan that this week departed from the south with close to 15,000 people.

“What is being done is normal, there is no special plan,” said the president during his morning press conference from the National Palace.

The president was questioned by the press about the deployment of almost 30,000 army personnel on the northern and southern borders for migration tasks.

López Obrador responded that when the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Marcelo Ebrard, who attended the Summit of the Americas in the United States on his behalf, returns, he will meet with him to review the immigration issue.

“Fundamentally because of the elections in the United States, to speak clearly, of course, people are in need, they want to work,” said the Mexican president.

According to López Obrador, for the last five years, since the administration of President Donald Trump, the Mexican government has sought support for Central America, but “there has been no response.”

“There was talk of 4 billion dollars and in four or five years they have allocated nothing,” he criticized.

He also criticized Republican Party legislators for accusing him of multiplying the presence of organized crime in Mexico and called on Cruz and Rubio to provide evidence against him, if they have it.

Civil organizations have on several occasions denounced abuses by authorities and the military when trying to contain the wave of migrants with raids and detentions.

The scrutiny has increased this week due to the departure on Monday of a migrant caravan of almost 15,000 people from Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala.

The region is experiencing a record flow into the United States, whose Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detected more than 1.7 million undocumented immigrants at the border with Mexico in the fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30.

Mexico intercepted more than 252,000 undocumented migrants from January to November and deported more than 100,000 in the same period, according to the Migration Policy Unit of the country’s Interior Ministry.

In addition, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (Comar) received a record 131,448 refugee applications in 2021. Of these, more than 51,000 are Haitians.

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