translated from Spanish: This is how U.S. flights operate to expel Central Americans through Chiapas

“We cross and then we give ourselves up with our children. They grabbed us and asked us absolutely nothing. We wanted to ask for asylum but they wouldn’t let us talk.” Dary Honelia de León is Guatemalan, around 30 years old and carries a baby in her arms. It is 20:00 hours, we are between the borders of Talismán (Chiapas, Mexico) and El Carmen (department of San Marcos, Guatemala). The woman has just been expelled by plane from the United States and, subsequently, transferred to the border with Guatemala in a bus of the National Institute of Migration (INM).
Now he does not know how to return to his home in the department of Petén, more than 700 kilometers away. “Can you imagine how I feel? We have a debt of 50,000 quetzales (almost 130,000 pesos) and now we have to transport ourselves with our own means, with our children.”
Read: Migrant return flights change from Mexico border to Honduras and Guatemala

De León cries with rage and helplessness and looks around strangely, as if she felt like a foreigner in her own country. Beside her is a small, thin, wrinkled man clinging to another baby while sobbing. He has no strength to utter a single word. Around them come money changers or people who insist on accompanying them to find a hotel room in which to spend the night. The man ignores them and only follows his group, crying, hugging the child. 
The story of Dery Honelia De León and the rest of his companions begins on Monday, August 29. That day, a group of about 10 people, including 5 children, tried to cross the Rio Grande at the height of Piedras Negras, Coahuila. As soon as they set foot on American soil, the Border Patrol arrived and everyone surrendered. The idea was to ask for asylum, but they were not given the opportunity.
“They didn’t let us talk, they didn’t ask us anything,” he explains. After the arrest, they spent two days locked up until they were informed that they would be expelled. No one told them where. They were simply taken to McAllen, Texas, put on a plane full of Guatemalans and Hondurans, and sent to Tapachula. Flight N529AU, operated by SwiftAir, landed there and at the foot of the runway they were waiting for the INM officers who transferred them to the border, located 35 kilometers from the airport. Once at customs, they got off the buses and told them to keep walking.

Alone, without money, without support of any kind, the expelled arrive in no man’s land between both steps and must manage to find their way back to their municipalities of origin. The woman says she is returning home but only to rest for a few days. The contract with the pollero (which is how guides who help cross into the United States are known) includes up to three attempts. She assures that she will not give up. That he will try again. He has nothing to lose. 
Read: INM and National Guard try to block migrants in Chiapas: how does this new caravan come about?
The INM denied the flights
Every day since the beginning of August, this scene is repeated on the borders of Talismán, in Chiapas, and El Ceibo, in Tabasco. Every afternoon, dozens of Central Americans are expelled from the U.S. in planes like the one that transported Dery Honelia de León. There, INM agents receive them, ride them on buses and take them to Guatemala.
These are deportations based on Title 42, the order implemented by former President Donald Trump and that allows all Mexicans and Central Americans who are detained at the border to turn around without giving the option to request asylum or enter the immigration system.
His successor in the White House, Joe Biden, gave one more twist: instead of returning migrants to the northern border of Mexico, to Matamoros, Tamaulipas; Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua; or Tijuana, Baja California, takes them by plane to southern Mexico. There, mexican government officials are in charge of completing the return. They do not offer them the possibility of protection nor do they register them as deportees. Officially they do not exist. 
Animal Político wanted to know the legal basis for these expulsions and asked the INM, but at press time it had not received a response. Both the U.S. and Guatemala have acknowledged the existence of these practices. Mexico, however, was able to deny it despite the fact that every day the arrival of the planes and buses is photographically documented.
The commissioner of the INM, Francisco Garduño, went so far as to assure that the flights did not exist. Mexico’s decision not to give explanations reaches the point that it is Guatemala that is reporting both the context of the border and the negotiations developed between the two countries so that the expulsions are adapted to their infrastructures.
There are no official figures on how many people have been returned through this mechanism. Guatemala began counting expulsions as of August 22, although only those arriving from El Ceibo, Tabasco.
According to the Migration Institute of the Central American country, from that day until September 6, 4,243 people were returned in 125 INM buses. Of these, more than a thousand were children and adolescents, although the vast majority arrived accompanied by a relative. Although most are Central Americans, the expulsion of Venezuelans, Cubans and even a Senegalese was recorded.
To contextualize well the dimension of these figures, it is enough to compare them with the regular deportations that Mexico carries out in a month. In July, for example, it deported 6,294 Central Americans. That is, if the trend of El Ceibo continues, we will reach the point where the López Obrador government will irregularly expel more Central Americans at a border point than all deportations combined. 
This figure does not only count people arriving from the U.S., but there are also migrants who Were aired by Mexico from northern border cities to be expelled in the south and even people arrested by the INM in the south who were then forced to move to Guatemala. Official sources who spoke on condition of anonymity explained that the number of expelled from the US could be around 3,500 (about 2,000 in El Ceibo and another 1,500 in Talisman). The expulsions, together with the eternal procedures and the operations launched by the INM are some of the reasons that explain the recent caravans that, until now without success, tried to leave Tapachula in the last week. 
Read: Detention and deportation of migrants is to take care of them, AMLO justifies
“I want to work”
For Cindy Ramos, 23, the journey also ended abruptly as she crossed the Rio Grande. With her 4-year-old son by the hand, she says she traveled from Nuevo Alemán, a community in the municipality of San Pablo, in the department of San Marcos, to look for economic opportunities. Although she has three children, two of them stayed with her dad and she traveled with the youngest. “I want to work,” she explained, succinctly, as she waited for a family member to pick her up. 
In recent months, the idea has spread that minors, especially those under the age of five, make it easier for Mexican authorities to allow migrants to stay in the U.S. Mexico’s Migrant Law, which theoretically prohibits locking up children and adolescents in detention centers, and an alleged more humanitarian attitude of the new U.S. government encouraged this idea. Cases like Ramos’ deny this. On Wednesday, she and her 4-year-old son were returning to Guatemala after setting foot north of the Rio Grande.
In his case the return is simple. She could take a bus or wait for a family member to greet her. However, Animal Político documented that on that same flight people came from more distant places, such as Guatemala City (located almost 300 kilometers away, which means a trip of almost 6 hours) or Honduras, whose closest border crossing is corinto, located 600 kilometers away. 
This system began in a disorderly manner in early August. In reality, the U.S. and Mexico applied the fait accompli policy. They began to return the Central Americans at times when the border was closed, so they were abandoned in Guatemala without any authority taking over.
Subsequently, the Guatemalan government and some NGOs sent support to El Ceibo, since all the burden of deportations was borne by the Casa del Migrante, with capacity for only 50 people and which was completely exceeded. In Talisman, by contrast, no institution ever came to offer help. The nearest hostel is Casa del Migrante de Tecún Umán, 40 kilometres away. In fact, Guatemala has been asking the Mexican government for weeks that instead of expelling Central Americans through the most remote passages, it concentrates them in the latter municipality, where a reception center is being built.
Find out: Arrests, clashes and raids: the hunt for migrants that occurs in Chiapas
The idea is that Hondurans and Salvadorans will arrive in El Ceibo, where they would be returned to their countries, while Guatemalans would return through Tecún Umán or, directly, by plane to the capital.
Although it was announced on Wednesday that there was an agreement and that a protocol was going to be established to regulate these expulsions, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo had to acknowledge that the new routes would take a month. That is, Mexico will continue to receive planes with expelled from the United States. and delivering them to Guatemala without any control. The complaints of UN agencies such as UNHCR and IOM, which denounced that these flights were a “violation” of international law, were of no use. 
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Original source in Spanish

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