Nearly half of asylum-seekers returned to Mexico under the “Remain in Mexico” program to await a U.S. immigration court hearing said they’d been abused by local officials, according to a Human Rights First report released Thursday.
The U.S.-based human rights organization reviewed 2,688 interviews of asylum-seekers conducted between January and August. Most of the migrants were from Latin America, and 47% said they’d been robbed or extorted by Mexican government officials, including immigration agents and security forces.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has focused his immigration strategy on regional development, insists that his government doesn’t tolerate corruption or abuse by security forces. He celebrated the decision to scale back the U.S. program, saying in August that Mexico had never agreed to be a “camp for migrants who are waiting for a resolution in the United States.”
