14ymedio/EFE, Mexico, December 25, 2023 — “Do you want to continue? You must pay 1,500 Mexican pesos (88 dollars),” said a Migration agent who withheld the passports of 13 Cubans on Monday at the checkpoint located in the municipality of Viva México (Chiapas). According to Zuselmi García López, they were traveling to join the caravan that left Tapachula on the same day with more than 10,000 migrants.
García López told local media that the agents first said that they were going to give them transport to Tuxtla Gutiérrez and that there they would “do the legal papers to continue.” This is the method that the officers use to dissolve the caravans. They put the migrants on trucks and return them to Tapachula; others take them to the Siglo XXI immigration station where they are detained for days.
At Cubans’ insistence to recover their passports, another officer told them that Admiral Roberto González would give them their passports when the caravan arrived. García López insisted that they wanted to continue with the group led by Luis García Villagrán, director of the Center for Human Dignity. That’s when they were told that they had to pay if they wanted to get their passports back.
Before the caravan arrived at the checkpoint in Viva Mexico, the Cubans denounced the attempt at extortion before some media that were at the scene. In front of the camera, García López accu