Mexico Is Overwhelmed By Asylum Claims As It Ramps Up Immigration Enforcement
Mexico pledged to ramp up immigration enforcement and let asylum-seekers wait on its side of the border. But on its own southern border, migrant detention centers are already overcrowded.
Rosa Hidalia Palacios fled El Salvador in April. She crossed into Mexico from Guatemala without a hitch, riding on a little raft that ferries people and goods back and forth. A few hundred yards down the Suchiate River from the rafting route, Mexican immigration enforcement agents watched idly from the official border crossing.
Palacios hasn't made it much farther than the border, as dozens of migration checkpoints cover all roads leading north. She is stuck in a nearby city, Tapachula, Mexico, waiting in line outside the little office of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid.
"I don't have a single peso," she says, sipping a cup of coffee. "Some
