14ymedio/EFE, Mexico, 5 February 2024 — “Violations, sexual abuse, kidnappings and trafficking” is what thousands of migrants are exposed to as they pass through the border between Guatemala and Chiapas, in the south of Mexico, lawyer José Luis Pérez tells 14ymedio. On the way, some women are “kidnapped by drug cartels and forced into prostitution,” he adds.
Chiapas ranks eighth in the crime of trafficking in Mexico. In 2020, 681 victims were registered in the state; the following year it rose to 753, and “in 2022 it shot up to 936 cases,” says the lawyer. In “the first half of 2023, there were 488 people affected by this crime,” he adds.
The lawyer emphasizes that “despair over the lack of money” and the delay of up to six months in immigration processes, “which many times” have a negative result, has also led Cubans, Venezuelans, Colombians and Haitians, for the most part, to offer “sexual services” in bars, canteens and nightclubs.
Genly, a Honduran migrant in Tapachula (Chiapas), worked in one of these bars that was closed on January 11 because it operated illegally. This 20-year-old migrant carried out her procedure before the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) in December last year and was given an appointment for next March 27, so she was not handed over to the Migration agents.
This cartel hooked many of the foreigners in the ADO bus terminal with the promise of giving them work and helping them reach the border with the United States
It was not the case of Yalim, 29, and Anadelys, 42, “two Cubans who were waiting for their appointment for CBP One, but because they were illegal they were taken to the Siglo XXI immigration station,”