Mexico, Mexico.
The Mexican Government’s National Migration Institute (INM) deported 136 Hondurans on Tuesday amid the advance of the first migrant caravans of the year from Central America to the United States.
“(The INM) carried out the assisted return of 136 people of Honduran nationality, who were irregularly in Mexico,” the institute, which reports to the Secretariat of the Interior (Segob), reported on its networks .
The deportation, which the Mexican government calls “assisted return,” takes place amid the advance of migrant caravans from Central America in the United States.
The Mexican government has acknowledged the actions of the Guatemalan authorities, who on Monday forcibly dissolved a group of more than 6,000 Hondurans seeking to reach the United States.
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Without clarifying how long they had been in Mexico, the INM shared images of the migrants as they got off a bus and then boarded a Magnicharters plane in front of the National Guard surveillance, military and police training corps.
“The flight departed from Villahermosa International Airport, Tabasco, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, respecting – at all times – its human rights,” said the INM.
In Mexico, migration has increased since October 2018, when caravans with thousands of Central American migrants began entering the country to reach the United States.
Faced with Donald Trump’s tariff threats, in June 2019 the two countries agreed that Mexico would deploy thousands of elements of the National Guard, a military-trained police force created by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on the southern border.
At one of his last public events, Trump boasted last week that there are now 27,000 Mexican soldiers “protecting the U.S. border” from migration.
“I want to thank great president of Mexico, he is a great gentleman, a friend of mine. President Obrador is a man who really knows what is going on, he loves his country and he also loves the United States, I want to thank him for his friendship, “Trump commented from the border wall in Alamo, Texas.
Lopez Obrador has expressed hope that Joe Biden, who replaces Trump as president of the United States this Wednesday, will fulfill his promise of immigration reform.
The Mexican president has said he will defend the country’s sovereignty in energy and in the case of Salvador Cienfuegos, a former member of the Mexican Army accused of drug trafficking by the United States, but has not clarified whether he will continue with the same migration policy.