Others are considering returning
While yesterday we commented on the hope—amid anxiety—of many migrants to enter the United States before January 20, 2025, or the intention of some to try their luck in Mexican industrial centers such as Monterrey, this Reuters cable shows us a trend—perhaps not so representative—of other migrants who are seriously considering returning to their countries unless they obtain a CBP One app-clinched appointment before the official transfer of power in Washington. Trump has promised that he will address the immigration issue from his first day in office, with the closure of several federal programs that have been very helpful to tens of thousands of migrants over the past two years as a very possible threat to materialize.
As it is, many migrants like a 52-year-old female Venezuelan in Mexico notes that she will return to her homeland if the above prognosis is confirmed. The woman claims to have been a victim of kidnapping along with two nephews and other migrants, escaping from their captors in an unspecified manner. She prefers whatever fate has in store for her back in the oil-producing nation—mired in an acute political crisis—to the insecurity she has encountered in Mexico. “I am traumatized. If I don't get the appointment, I will go back,” he assured Reuters. Other migrants projected the same decision even though the major problems in their countries of origin have not been solved: insecurity—surely in a very different gradation than the one operating in Mexico—, poverty, lack of sound job opportunities, or political instability.
“I cry every day and ask God to take me back, I don't want to be here anymore... this is horrible,” says another Venezuelan to the British agency, also referring to having been a victim of violence in Aztec territory. Between 50 and 100 Venezuelans are reportedly applying to return to their country every week from Mexico, according to a Venezuelan official whose identity is not disclosed in the wire news cable I reviewed. Some assume the costs and others require assistance from the Venezuelan government, which last year set up a repatriation program for its citizens abroad, although mainly oriented in practice to those who had settled in South American countries such as Chile or Peru. There are always—and probably continue to be the most—migrants like a young Venezuelan woman—still in Guatemala, on her way to Mexico—who told Reuters that “[if] it's not by appointment, there's always a way” to cross.
Source<>Ecuador
President Daniel Noboa has renewed for thirty days a state of emergency introduced in October, covering six provinces and two Ecuadorian municipalities where the main hotspots of violence are located. It has been a tough year in Ecuador despite the mobilization of the military for internal security tasks following the declaration of an “internal armed conflict” in January, after the embarrassing escape of criminal leader Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito”, and the subsequent outbreak of violence in the province of Guayas, a sort of ad hoc capital of crime in the South American nation. The year 2024 is about to close and there is no concrete news of Fito's whereabouts despite that “all of the police's efforts are focused on locating and capturing him,” according to a high-ranking official (one line of investigation places him in Mexico after having crossed the Darién camouflaged among hundreds of migrants from all over, and another has him still in Ecuador, moving through its coastal zone). Despite the decrease—according to the Government—of 17% in the national homicide rate, even assuming that figure we are talking about that for every 100 Ecuadorians who died fundamentally shot last year, in 2024 less than 20 have been saved. The EFE cable I have referred to reports that last Sunday there was a massacre of ten people in a municipality of Machala. Not even the control of the military in the prisons has prevented the occurrence of massacres in these facilities, and the vulnerability of the agents and officials linked to them is evident, especially concerning the prison complex in Guayas.
And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
