Mexico says screw you Uncle Joe, unlike that last guy you’re a submissive pussy we can control. And Joe’s response? Block American media from showing pictures of what’s going on there.
The surprising answer, which the migrants provided independently in different places and at different times, was universal: on Sunday, September 12, the Mexican government effectively sent a mass of migrants it had bottled up for months in its southern states up to the American border. This move, which appears to have been done under the cover of Mexico's independence week of celebration known as El Grito, essentially foisted a humanitarian problem onto the Americans in a single week.
A quick background is necessary to understand what the migrants were saying. In short, when it was newly installed in January, the Biden [junta] began to pressure Mexico to maintain and use its National Guard and immigration bureaucracy to slow the flow of expected caravans and of tens of thousands of Haitians and other migrants coming in from all over the world. This was a fairly quiet diplomatic campaign, and it coincided with billions in promised U.S. aid and other benefits such as covid vaccines. It was a different approach from the Trump style of threatening to damage the Mexican economy with tariffs unless the leadership slowed U.S.-bound illegal immigration coming through Guatemala.
In response to Biden's softer approach with gifts, Mexico apparently responded with a lighter version of a Trump-era tactic, which was to require that migrants entering from Guatemala be held in the southern state of Chiapas, in the border city of Tapachula, until they applied for and obtained temporary legal permits. National Guard roadblocks reinforced the policy.
As CIS [Center for Immigration Studies] reported in March from Mexico, many thousands of immigrants willing to invest in bribes and smuggling fees obviously find ways around the National Guard. But many thousands of others chose not to invest in these expensive end-runs and stayed in Tapachula for months hoping for cheaper Mexican papers solution.
Probably by design, the documents were slow to come, taking three, four or five months. A sea of migrants built up behind this bureaucratic dam, tens of thousands of them . . .
. . . The reason, according to the migrants CIS interviewed, the Mexican cartels in this city do not involve themselves in human smuggling as they do in other parts of northern Mexico. Migrants who get to Acuna are free to cross themselves over the river without paying a tax or smuggling fee to ruthless Mexican cartels, with no fear of violent retribution for doing so on their own. . .
. . . Many are now boarding yet more buses inside the camp, these ones provided by DHS to take them to Border Patrol processing stations. Some may be deported. But most likely will spend a day or two until they get temporary resident permits and a date to appear at an American immigration office in the city of their choice. Then under current Biden policies for families and unaccompanied minors, a great many will be released to travel anywhere in America, boarding yet more buses to those cities and towns. . .
. . . CIS could find no public reporting of any official Mexico announcement or confirmation of these immigrant accounts.
But if their accounts prove to be true, Mexico's decision presents a clear diplomatic affront to the Biden [junta], transferring a significant threat management and humanitarian challenge to America, not to mention a potential political problem for the Biden [junta]. . .
. . . In a sign of keen awareness that the Del Rio encampment situation portends political damage in an area where polls show Biden is already very weak, the [junta] has picked a strategy of not speaking about it and working to make sure no one else did either.
The White House had not addressed the camp. Up until Friday, DHS was content to let the city of Del Rio lead a press conference about national immigration policy and what was happening.
The federal government barred reporters from touring the site and rarely made officials available for questions. At one point, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ban on unmanned aerial vehicles over the bridge area, a measure that seemed aimed at Fox News, which has fielded a drone team to photograph the migrant shantytown.
It is reported that migrants being detained in Tapachula are free to leave in celebration of Mexican independence day.
cis.org
