Migrants in Mexico sew their mouths shut in protest

Six migrants in the Latin American country sewed their mouths shut in protest against Mexico’s restrictive immigration policy. “We want the authorities to listen to us and give us freedom of movement to achieve our goal,” Salvadoran Roberto Moreno said Tuesday (local time) in the city of Huixtla in the southern state of Chiapas.

The six migrants are among a group of about 3,000 people from the Caribbean, Central and South America who headed north from southern Mexico on Sunday. Most migrants passing through Mexico want to reach the United States.

People from Cuba, Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela and Colombia participated in the protest. They also called for those responsible for the deaths of 40 migrants to be held accountable a month ago in a fire at an immigration office in Ciudad Juarez, on the border with the United States. A man wore a red painted cross with the white inscription: “State crime 40 dead”.

Most people who want to go to the US via Mexico are fleeing poverty, violence and political crises in their home countries. Between October 2021 and October 2022, the US Border Protection Agency recorded more than two million attempts to enter the United States.

(yam/sda/dpa)