At Mexico's southern border, migrants feel the pinch of a crackdown spurred by US
TAPACHULA, Mexico - Long lines of migrants, mostly Central Americans, line up daily outside the Tapachula offices of the refugee agencies of Mexico and the United Nations.
Meanwhile, a polyglot throng including people from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean regularly gathers at the local headquarters of the National Institute of Immigration, Mexico's agency for migrant affairs.
Almost all those seeking help have a common destination - the United States - but they find themselves caught in an expanding Mexican immigration crackdown prompted by U.S. pressure and marooned in this sweltering city in southern Mexico.
They cannot proceed north without risking arrest, so they remain in Tapachula seeking documentation allowing legal travel to the U.S.-Mexico border, more than 1,000 miles away. They say they are fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands.
Maribel Amador and her family were among those gathered on a recent afternoon outside the offices of the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission.
"There is nothing we can do but wait," said Amador, 36, a Honduran national seeking refugee status in Mexico along with her husband and four
