After being arrested in 2015 upon arrival from Colombia, deprived of her liberty and forced to fight a battle for her right to residence in Mexico while serving part of her sentence on conditional release – already married to a Mexican – Enith Martínez Rodríguez is finally free and obtained a residence permit in the country for the next two years.
“I feel super happy, happy and satisfied because, in the end, I was demanding a right that, I considered, corresponded to me and I already have it. I was fortunate that things began to change; It has been a chain of help for all the people who were behind all this. Human Rights of Morelos was in direct accompaniment with me in Migration, which also generated that the opening was much more, “says Enith a few days after receiving the news about the extinction of the sentence and the authorization to stay in Mexico.
He recalls that it was on November 11 when he learned that the measures of probation would be eliminated, and the following Monday the National Institute of Migration (INM) resolved the same day the residence for two years. It was a long process, but there were many elements that he was fully fulfilling his social reintegration: study, work, sports, community service, training and participation.
Seven years ago, Enith was arrested for allegedly introducing a psychotropic drug when she arrived in Mexico from Colombia. Later, she was forced to sign a statement under threat to her children and family. Through informal pretrial detention, she was deprived of liberty first in Nayarit and then in Morelos. After four years, she was finally sentenced, and soon after she obtained a reduction to serve the rest of the sentence on probation.
At that time, a new battle was just beginning. She decided to start a law degree, got a job where she was given permission to go and sign at the prison body and even volunteers with a group for women in rehabilitation. By that time married to a Mexican woman, since May 2021 she had requested her residence from the INM, which the agency systematically denied her because “her background compromised national security.” In addition, he accused discrimination based on his nationality and sexual orientation.
Today, her status has finally changed: she is a young Colombian migrant, lesbian, completely free and with authorized residence in Mexico for the next two years. With the fulfillment of his sentence, the prison authorities have eliminated the limitations he had to develop his life, in the legal field, in a freer way in the country, while the immigration authority, which had denied him temporary residence, has now given him the possibility of having a CURP, access to other jobs, have registration in the IMSS, perform other activities and stay with your partner.
A symbolic case
Enith considers the process lived as a “little path” so that other people in her situation have that guidance and know what to do. Among the most complicated, he stresses, was the complexity of social labels, and the tendency to link the past with the present without knowing everything behind it. Today, she says, she is happy and grateful because she has testified that it is possible to achieve “what we call rights.”
“I believe that when you do things right, you not only take the initiative, but you consider yourself to have enough right to be able to demand what corresponds. What happened to me has been part of knowing how to address us and who to reach. The approach they made me have with the head of INM Morelos opened the door for me for the professionalism with which they treated me later; I complained a lot about the attention, and there came a time when they moved me to another instance and the situation changed radically,” he says.
His case is symbolic and a precedent on the right to migration and the lack of public policies for migrants serving a sentence in Mexico, considers the organization CEA Social Justice, which accompanied the case, published by Political Animal on 20 September, when the INM still insisted on denying her residency and constantly threatened to deport her.
“As soon as we began to publicize the case, the authorities, especially from the INM in the delegation that is in Morelos, radically changed their attitude towards Enith, and the same happened with the prison authorities. It is very important to emphasize that it is from what Enith has done, which is to insist on defending their right to migrate, and also their right to reintegrate into a society like ours, with all that that implies, “said Ángela Guerrero, coordinator of CEA Justicia SocIal.
The battle won in the end, he adds, is that the authority has recognized his right to live in Mexico and to stay with his family for two years. Enith’s case is symbolic of how different situations that have made her vulnerable, and for which she was discriminated against, for many reasons, since she was released from prison in 2021, can intersect.
See also: More than 3,200 migrants located in different operations in Mexico in one day
Released migrants in limbo: Enith’s case sets a precedent
Enith’s case points to the need for a protocol for people who are discharged from prisons and seek to stay in Mexico, Guerrero stresses. In the same way, a thorough diagnosis of what happens when people are transferred in total secrecy to migrant holding centers, where they can be kept for days without their own relatives knowing about their release, is indispensable.
“This is not clear, there is no clarity with the National Institute of Migration. Cases like Enith’s we have already had several; It is the first we see since the organization is operating, and this is important, that it has a successful outcome. The vast majority of them are sent to migrant holding centers, and from there they are returned to their countries even though they may even have children here or a couple; This is not being respected,” he accuses.
According to Guerrero, there should be more clarity and certainty of what are the reasons why migrants can be deported after serving a sentence, and if this should apply to all crimes, or only some, as well as how the authority is guaranteeing their rights, because until now it is a dynamic of battles like that of Enith. and not recognition of rights.
Although CEA Social Justice has tried to locate broader data on people from other countries who leave prisons and end up being deported, it is difficult to identify how many there are, despite the fact that there is a significant population in prisons from abroad.
According to the National Survey of Population Deprived of Liberty (ENPOL, 2021) of the Inegi, 2,799 people deprived of liberty in Mexico were born in another country, 2,557 men and 242 women. Of the total, 55.2% did not have papers proving their stay in Mexico before their imprisonment. In addition, at the national level, 60.9% of women deprived of liberty considered that being in a penitentiary center would affect their chances of reintegration when serving their sentence.
“The National Commission (of Human Rights) I think it would be important to make a specific diagnosis of people who are from other countries and who leave the penal system; Knowing what happens to them is very important. In Enith’s case, there was a strong risk that she would be returned to her place of origin without being able to prepare for that return, which could have put her at a very significant risk,” Guerrero added.
To this is added that conditional freedom, whose measures ended a few days ago for Enith, is actually a scheme that greatly limits the possibilities of a successful reintegration process. Now, Enith will even be able to travel to visit her family in Colombia and re-enter Mexico without problem.
“They were limitations that were being put on him; That is not social reintegration, those are obstacles that the authority is putting up so that a person can rejoin, and they do not make sense. What the authority is looking for is that she does not commit crimes, and all these measures what they do is close opportunities for another type of life. This has not been easy,” says Guerrero.
With the new news, Enith glimpses in the near future the consolidation of the projects that she has raised around new job opportunities and the conclusion of her studies: “Now I can do it with that freedom, I continue studying and it is to be able to explore all the fields that I want to know”. In addition to that, there is the desire he had to move through Mexican territory with total freedom, but also to travel to visit his family.
“Not only the academic plans, work, but in a personal matter to travel, to know, to go, to be able to travel with that freedom is something incredible and more than that, the visit with my family. I haven’t seen my family for seven years, and my plan in two months is my first trip to see them,” she says, hoping to preserve the stable life she has already built in Mexico. Nothing that happened in the past, he says, takes away his intention to stay here.
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