Overcrowding, pests and insufficient food: detention centers for migrant children in Mexico
Migrant families denounce the situation in the shelter in the Mexican capital where a girl died in May.
A Venezuelan family walks at a shelter home in Mexico City (Natalia Bonilla).
The building has two watchtowers with armed police from the State of Mexico. To enter, migrant children pass through a barred gate and a metal detector. There, they are locked up without communication. They will be assigned one of the rooms with cement bunk beds and sleeping pads, —from where many leave with bedbug infections, hives, diarrhea, and tonsillitis. Some will sleep in the corridors, crammed among hundreds more coming from Central America, Asia, and Africa, carrying the burden of a past of violence, deprivation, and trauma. They're allowed to see their parents three times a week for fifteen minutes. Three meals a day, a courtyard, and a television will be their world for the next days or months.
These are the conditions of the migration station in Iztapalapa (south-east of Mexico City) where minors are housed, according to the descriptions of migrants who have been there and NGOs reports. This station shares the same history of complaints of overcrowding and inhumane treatment as other detention centers in the country. It houses detained minors in Mexico, more than 33,100 in 2019, under Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration, who has reinforced immigration control following the agreement signed in June with the United States.
Two Venezuelan families who were detained for 23 days in Iztapalapa told EL PAÍS that the confinement, the restricted schedules, and the mistreatment made them feel like they had ended up in jail. Their crime: presenting their passports to the Mexican authorities to ask for asylum. As in the United States, families were separated in the detention center because it has different areas for women with children, teenagers, and men. "We cry like never before," recalls Carlos, one of the migrants who asked for his identity to be protected. For a month, he saw his children for only a few minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Although the most shocking part was the poor sanitary conditions. There were four doctors in rotation for more than 400 people. "The negligence is very high and they treat you badly," said Alejandra, one of the mothers. Her baby, a whirlwind of small eyes and curly hair, lost three kilos and suffered five days of fever without proper food and assistance, she says.
These are the conditions of the migration station in Iztapalapa (south-east of Mexico City) where minors are housed, according to the descriptions of migrants who have been there and NGOs reports. This station shares the same history of complaints of overcrowding and inhumane treatment as other detention centers in the country. It houses detained minors in Mexico, more than 33,100 in 2019, under Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration, who has reinforced immigration control following the agreement signed in June with the United States.
Two Venezuelan families who were detained for 23 days in Iztapalapa told EL PAÍS that the confinement, the restricted schedules, and the mistreatment made them feel like they had ended up in jail. Their crime: presenting their passports to the Mexican authorities to ask for asylum. As in the United States, families were separated in the detention center because it has different areas for women with children, teenagers, and men. "We cry like never before," recalls Carlos, one of the migrants who asked for his identity to be protected. For a month, he saw his children for only a few minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Although the most shocking part was the poor sanitary conditions. There were four doctors in rotation for more than 400 people. "The negligence is very high and they treat you badly," said Alejandra, one of the mothers. Her baby, a whirlwind of small eyes and curly hair, lost three kilos and suffered five days of fever without proper food and assistance, she says.
A 15-year-old Venezuelan poses with a mask decorated by him in a shelter in Mexico City (Natalia Bonilla).
What the families say has already been documented. During a visit in June, the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture (MNPT) found that the station in Iztapalapa does not comply with the hygiene, food, medical care, and safety recommendations issued in 2018 to prevent torture and ill-treatment.
The 10-year-old Guatemalan girl who died on 15 May was housed in that detention center. The tragedy showed a new parallel between Mexican policy and that of Donald Trump's government in the United States, where five migrant children have died in detention centers. Mexico's Interior Ministry reported that the cause of the Guatemalan girl's death was the impact she suffered when she fell from her bunk at the station, where she had been taken alongside her mother from the northern border. The Venezuelan mothers, who say they slept in the next room, believe she could have been saved.
"At about four o'clock in the afternoon, the girl fell. She went to the doctor with a lot of pain: she cried and cried and grabbed her ribs. They told her she had gastritis and gave her a pill. She went three more times, (...) at about nine o'clock in the evening, we entered her room and we saw that she was dying, her eyes turned, and she had no color in her skin, her face. We all started asking for her to be taken to a hospital, and they took her out on a mat," says Alejandra. Days later, they put bars on the bunk beds. "It's unfair that it's like she just died and that's it." The National Institute of Migration (INM) indicated that they will not make any comments because it is an open investigation.
The inhumane conditions of detention do not only occur in Iztapalapa but also in a dozen other stations in the country, as documented by NGOs and defenders of migrants. The Human Rights Observation Mission for Refugees from the Southeast of Mexico, made up of 24 groups, indicates that the lack of hygiene in shelters in the southern state of Chiapas causes physical and mental suffering to migrants. The crisis is said has aggravated by the record number of detentions reached after Mexico pledged to stem the flow of migrants, and the increase in the migration of Central American children by 132% in the first half of 2019 compared to 2018, according to INM.
Margarita Griesbach, an advocate for the Network for Children's Rights in Mexico (REDIM),
explains that children are neglected because of the collapse of the institutions in the region and a
lack of proper planning and resources.
More than 13,200 children under the age of 11 and 9,040 adolescents - either alone or accompanied - were detained until May 2019 in Mexico, according to the federal government. This deprivation of liberty has been questioned by the United Nations Committee Against Torture since national laws and international treaties mandate the search for alternatives. The stations are not prepared for their specific needs, the Committee adds, and there are reports of extortion and abuse by official agents.
Most children and their families have fled violence and poverty from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In Mexico, for some, the abuses continue by coyotes. But also, by the authorities during detention as well as in the transfer and permanence in the stations. This sequence causes migrants to suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety disorders, says Ruth González, a psychologist at the Casa Mambré shelter in Scalabrinianas Misión. The children manifest the trauma with crying, irritability, nightmares, need for containment, and violent reactions. Many suffer regressions such as the absence of speech or lose control of their sphincters. "With respect to children's rights, Mexico falls short," Gonzalez says.
The 10-year-old Guatemalan girl who died on 15 May was housed in that detention center. The tragedy showed a new parallel between Mexican policy and that of Donald Trump's government in the United States, where five migrant children have died in detention centers. Mexico's Interior Ministry reported that the cause of the Guatemalan girl's death was the impact she suffered when she fell from her bunk at the station, where she had been taken alongside her mother from the northern border. The Venezuelan mothers, who say they slept in the next room, believe she could have been saved.
"At about four o'clock in the afternoon, the girl fell. She went to the doctor with a lot of pain: she cried and cried and grabbed her ribs. They told her she had gastritis and gave her a pill. She went three more times, (...) at about nine o'clock in the evening, we entered her room and we saw that she was dying, her eyes turned, and she had no color in her skin, her face. We all started asking for her to be taken to a hospital, and they took her out on a mat," says Alejandra. Days later, they put bars on the bunk beds. "It's unfair that it's like she just died and that's it." The National Institute of Migration (INM) indicated that they will not make any comments because it is an open investigation.
The inhumane conditions of detention do not only occur in Iztapalapa but also in a dozen other stations in the country, as documented by NGOs and defenders of migrants. The Human Rights Observation Mission for Refugees from the Southeast of Mexico, made up of 24 groups, indicates that the lack of hygiene in shelters in the southern state of Chiapas causes physical and mental suffering to migrants. The crisis is said has aggravated by the record number of detentions reached after Mexico pledged to stem the flow of migrants, and the increase in the migration of Central American children by 132% in the first half of 2019 compared to 2018, according to INM.
Margarita Griesbach, an advocate for the Network for Children's Rights in Mexico (REDIM),
explains that children are neglected because of the collapse of the institutions in the region and a
lack of proper planning and resources.
More than 13,200 children under the age of 11 and 9,040 adolescents - either alone or accompanied - were detained until May 2019 in Mexico, according to the federal government. This deprivation of liberty has been questioned by the United Nations Committee Against Torture since national laws and international treaties mandate the search for alternatives. The stations are not prepared for their specific needs, the Committee adds, and there are reports of extortion and abuse by official agents.
Most children and their families have fled violence and poverty from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In Mexico, for some, the abuses continue by coyotes. But also, by the authorities during detention as well as in the transfer and permanence in the stations. This sequence causes migrants to suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety disorders, says Ruth González, a psychologist at the Casa Mambré shelter in Scalabrinianas Misión. The children manifest the trauma with crying, irritability, nightmares, need for containment, and violent reactions. Many suffer regressions such as the absence of speech or lose control of their sphincters. "With respect to children's rights, Mexico falls short," Gonzalez says.
