Safety and human dignity for migrants

Guarantee the right to defend the human rights of those who offer different forms of aid to migrants.

Due to the situation of violence in the Northern region of Chiapas and numerous dead threats and surveillance incidences probably linked to organized crime related to human trafficking, we have given security workshops to the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary who serve migrants at Casa Betania Santa Martha, in Salto de Agua, Chiapas. Some catechists have even threatened with a high caliber assault rifle.

Report Observation Mission Humanitarian Crisis of Migrants and Refugees

The 21th of November several organizations presented the Report: Impacts of Mexico's Migration Policy on the Southern Border in our San Cristóbal, Chiapas located office. The report is based on the findings of the Observation Mission of the Humanitarian Crisis of Migrants and Refugees in the Mexican Southeast.

Main findings, among others are:

• Extreme presence of security forces and testimonies of migrants detained and beaten within the facilities of public security forces.
• A fast and efficient migratory system for detention and deportation; but slow, obsolete, corrupt and bureaucratic for assistance and attention to regularization procedures.
• Cases of family separation, both of adults or children and adolescents detained and the rest of their relatives released. One of them was that of a detained mother forced to stop breastfeeding her five-month-old baby, since he was released - along with other relatives - and she remained in detention.
• The accelerated incorporation of armed forces - National Guard - in control operations, without any training in human rights.

Download the report here

We received the XV Caravan of Central American Mothers of Disappeared Migrants. 

Led by Martha Sánchez Soler, president of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement (MMM) and organizer of the caravan, they arrived in San Cristóbal the 20^th of November 2019 and marched to the office of our Human Rights Center (Frayba), shouting Where are they? Where are they? Our children? Where are they? Son and daughter listen, your mother is fighting for you! “Silent mothers will never be heard”.

In our office they held a press conference and we listened to the voices of Central American mothers looking for their missing children who migrated to the north: …”in the beginning it was hopeless, but the findings that have been made through the caravan gave us courage and spirit of struggle. They are the engine of our resistance “. In these 15 long years of great struggle they have found 310 missing persons.