MEXICO CITY -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Saturday that his country must help Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence, even as it increases security to deter migrants from passing through Mexico and making their way to the U.S.
Mexico's president has walked a fine line between enforcement and humanitarian overtures for migrants since he took office Dec. 1. Initially his administration issued thousands of transit visas for safe passage through Mexico, only to clamp down shortly after with stepped-up detentions and deportations. Under pressure from the U.S., Mexico plans to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops by Tuesday to its southern border with Guatemala to slow the arrival of migrants to the U.S.
The Associated Press saw armed Mexican soldiers with black National Guard armbands stationed just north of the Guatemalan border on Saturday, stopping trucks to ask passengers for identification.
"The truth is that there is a great humanitarian crisis in Central America, and many people out of necessity have set out to look for a life in the United States and they pass through our territory," said Lopez Obrador, speaking in the northern state of Chihuahua.
Lopez Obrador said the refusal to help foreigners in need is "anti-Christian," adding that "we can't turn our backs on them."
He is lobbying for international development aid to help Central Americans stay in their countries of origin. He said Saturday that 80 percent of the migrants crossing through Mexico, and heading toward the U.S., are from Central America.
Mexico has offered refuge to migrants with credible fears, and thousands remain in the country while they await court dates for asylum petitions in the U.S.
The understaffed and underfunded Mexican refugee commission faces a backlog of cases.
But in recent months, police and immigration authorities have stepped up enforcement in southern Mexico, setting up highway checkpoints, raiding a caravan of mostly Central American migrants and trying to keep people off the northbound train known as "the beast."
At the same time, Mexicans have grown increasingly intolerant of the large numbers of migrants passing through their country in an attempt to reach the U.S.
On Friday, a sociologist who served as Mexico's immigration chief resigned and was replaced by the country's director of prisons. Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said an additional 825 immigration agents will be sent to the southern border this week.
Alejandro Murat, governor of the southern state of Oaxaca, applauded the stepped-up enforcement and controls. "For the first time, there will be order on the southern border that will allow us to have the identity and control of who is in the national territory," Murat said Friday.
Information for this article was contributed by Benjamin Alfaro of The Associated Press.
A Section on 06/16/2019