MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is studying a change in the way it handles migrants who have been overwhelming its facilities near the border with Guatemala, and may try to keep more of them in newly constructed voluntary shelters rather than in detention facilities.
Tonatiuh Guillén, director of the National Immigration Institute, told The Associated Press this week that migrants requesting asylum or certain other visas would be free to come and go from the shelters. He said the first such shelter would be built in Chiapas near the southern border.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has insisted that his main strategy to deal with migration is to improve conditions in migrants' countries of origin so they don't feel compelled to leave.Mexico's efforts did not appear to immediately appease President Donald Trump, who unleashed a broadside on Twitter on Tuesday.
Guillén did not provide many details for the plan that is still being developed. But he said the idea is to reduce the number of immigrant detention centers — there are now more than 50 — and reserve them for migrants who are awaiting deportation. Camargo said the idea appeared to formalize what authorities had already done in moving migrants from the detention center in Tapachula to a fairground, which did not have adequate facilities for them.
Guillén said the immigration agency had fired some 600 employees for reasons including"inadequate conduct, signs of corruption, others for performance, others for not passing confidence controls..."
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