The Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (Comar) registered 12,991 asylum applications during the month of September, leading to a total of 90,314 throughout 2021.
This figure is already 28% higher than the 70,406 in 2019, which until now was the record of foreigners asking for protection in Mexico. According to the calculations of the coordinator of the Comar, Andrés Ramírez, if the trend is maintained until the end of the year, it can reach 120,000 asylum seekers, three times more than the 40,000 last year.
If we take into account that in 2013 only 1,296 requests for refuge were received, it is observed that the increase is spectacular in the last decade.
This September the figure has stabilized relatively, since in August there were 13 thousand 80 applications, the highest number that has been reached in a single month.
By country, Honduras continues to be the one that submits the most refugee applications, with 31,894. However, Haitians are almost on par with Hondurans in the ranks of Comar, with 31,289 requests for protection.
We must add the 26,007 with Haitian nationality plus the 3,591 with a Chilean passport and the thousand 691 with Brazilian documents. They are the children of Haitian families who arrived in these two South American countries over the past decade and set out for the United States in mid-2021, encouraged by the economic crisis in their countries and the false hope of regularization in the U.S. due to the expansion of TPS, protection for those who already reside there.
Behind are Cubans (7,683), Salvadorans (5,170), Venezuelans (4,670), Guatemalans (3,564), Nicaraguans (2,460) and Colombians (907).
The vast majority of asylum seekers arrive in Mexico through Chiapas and ask for protection at Comar’s offices in Tapachula. In fact, this year alone 63,126 people requested refuge in this Chiapas municipality. If the trend continues at the end of the year there will be more asylum requests in Tapachula alone than in the entire republic in 2019. Behind are Mexico City, with 11,311 applications; Tabasco, with 5,897; Palenque, 4,117; Veracruz, 3,196; and Baja California, with 2,667.
These figures serve to explain the collapse recorded in the Comar facilities in recent months. On the one hand, the number of newcomers has multiplied. On the other is the phenomenon of the Haitian population, who arrived in Mexico with the intention of reaching the United States but in the absence of migratory alternatives resorted to asking for asylum to avoid being deported.
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