Mexican immigration agents conduct migrant raids in Ciudad Juárez
by Special to El Paso Matters, El Paso Matters
April 2, 2024
By La Verdad
Ciudad Juárez – With the deployment of more than 200 federal agents to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s National Migration Institute, or INM, is again boosting its immigration raids and other controls to prevent migrant settlements from forming along the Rio Grande and stop migrants from crossing into the United States.
The operation is led by INM Commissioner Francisco Garduño Yánez and kicked off Monday – five days after the one-year anniversary of the fire in a migrant detention center in Juárez that killed 40 migrants and injured 27 others. Garduño Yánez is charged in the fire for failure to keep migrants safe but remains free and on the job while he awaits trial.
INM agents this week were instructed to carry out immigration controls on the banks of the Rio Grande and some areas of this border community, to stop irregular migratory flows in the region, and immediately transfer migrants out of the area by land or air, it was reported. Neither Garduño nor the INM provided information about the operation.
Similar immigration raids and controls were implemented in the city in January 2023, with the arrival of more than 200 additional agents to those operating in the INM regional office. Those deployments came ahead of President Joe Biden’s stop in El Paso that month. The following month, law enforcement officials from the three levels of government were also deployed. The practice came to a stop after the tragic fire on March 27, 2023. Many of the migrants who died in the fire had been rounded up in citywide raids.
The immigration controls reintroduced on Monday will be implemented with agents from the Specialized Migration Assistance Group (GEAM) formed by the INM on March 20, according to unofficial information.
They resumed operations a few days after large groups of migrants were again detected crossing into the United States through this region. Two weeks ago, hundreds of migrants were arrested by Texas Department of Public Safety state troopers after they rushed across the Rio Grande, tore down razor wire barriers and pushed past Texas National Guard members as they tried to reach Border Patrol agents to request asylum.
According to INM sources who cannot be named because they do not have authorization to speak on the subject, the operation began in Juárez but will later extend to the south of the state of Chihuahua to prevent the formation of migrant settlements.
The sources said that a regional operations center will be set up in the city of Jiménez, south of Chihuahua, in coordination with the INM regional offices in Durango and Coahuila to close the passage of migrants to the northern border. INM, however, calls the operation humanitarian rescue.
El Paso Matters contributed to this report.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
