Last week, we talked about the so-called superhighway for illegal migrants being opened between South America and the United States. That discussion was based on an August 2 article at CIS.org by Todd Bensman, a reporter who researches illegal migration on the ground where it occurs. The article, “New Migrant ‘Superhighway’ Bringing the World from South America to Texas,” in addition to describing the new maritime bypass being opened around Panama’s Darien Gap, also revealed a change of policy by the Mexican government that constitutes the other part of the “superhighway.”
Since signing an agreement with the Trump White House in 2019, the Mexican government had been bottling up illegal northbound migrants in the southern city of Tapachula, often for months. It accomplished this by requiring that the migrants obtain hard-to-get visas and other documents before proceeding to the U.S. This policy was enforced by 30,000 Mexican National Guardsmen who guarded highways in southern Mexico.
This summer, however, apparently with the secret consent of the Biden administration, Mexico has discontinued that policy and is freely granting seven-day transit visas in Tapachula and, fifty miles north in the town of Huixtla, 30-day visas. Thus, the migrant avoids a delay in Tapachula and has sufficient time to get to the U.S. border and across, where he will likely be welcomed by a declawed and ineffectual U.S. Border Patrol.
The very predictable result of this reversal of policy has been an increase in migrants appearing at our border. Bensman writes:
By the end of July, at least 16 caravans of various sizes have been allowed to obtain the visas in the southern Mexican city of Huixtla and continue on to Texas or Arizona. Now, the Mexican soldiers escort the immigrants to ensure their safety, rather than block any of them. . . . Opening up Darien Gap short-cuts and ending long entrapping delays in southern Mexico squarely hit the Biden administration’s often-stated policy goal of creating “safe, humane, and orderly” migration to the American border.
For more, see CIS.org.