Mexico Can’t Deport Nicaraguans Expelled from the USA
Mexico faces limitations on any effort to deport Nicaraguans expelled from the United States.
HAVANA TIMES – Mexico, as a migrant-receiving country, faces particular challenges with deportees from Nicaragua and Venezuela, due to the complex political and social situation in these countries.
Mexican political scientist Stephanie Henaro explained to DW news service that Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has signed an agreement with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s regime to facilitate the deportation of Venezuelan migrants detained in Mexico. As part of the agreement, these migrants will receive social support financed by the Mexico upon their return to Venezuela, in order to prevent them from trying to leave again.
However, the case of Nicaragua is different. “Nicaraguan migrants cannot be deported to their country. Hence, like the Cubans, Haitians and Hondurans, they remain in Mexican states bordering Guatemala,” said Henaro.
Ariel Ruiz, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, working with the US Immigration Policy Program and the Latin America and Caribbean Initiative, explained that the transfer of deported migrants from the northern border to southern Mexico is a practice that takes time.
“This is something that had already been done in the first Trump administration, and also under Biden, and now it continues. A migrant who is transferred to Chiapas, for example, can still try to return to the US border and cross again irregularly, and that’s the option most migrants usually take. However, with Trump’s more aggressive policies, it’s a little less viable, because if they’re detained again, this can lead to worse consequences,” Ruiz warned.
According to official statistics from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 45,995 Nicaraguans are on the list to be deported from the US. However, far from adopting a policy of protection for its citizens, the Nicaraguan regime maintains a stance of rejection: since late last year, it has denied entry to numerous Nicaraguans. Examples of this are the documented cases of Anielka Espino and Valeria Sanchez, among others.
Despite this situation, this week Daniel Ortega cynically pronounced himself in solidarity with the migrants deported since Donald Trump took power. Meanwhile, the United States called his regime an “enemy of humanity” and blamed it for the massive migration in the region.