CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — The first place many immigrants sleep after entering Mexico from Guatemala is the inside of a large structure, a rural farm with a roof over it and fences around the sides. They call it the “chicken coop” and can’t leave without paying the cartel that runs it.

Migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border have reached their lowest level in four years, but migrants continue to flock to Mexico days before the US elections, where immigration is a major issue.

While U.S. officials largely credit their Mexican counterparts with stopping the flow toward their shared border, organized crime maintains a tighter grip on who moves here than the handful of federal agents and National Guardsmen standing by the river.

Kidnapped immigrants who pay a $100 ransom to be released are branded to signal their payment. From January to August, more than 150,000 immigrants were stopped by immigration agents in this very southern corner of Mexico; this is considered a very small fraction of the flow.

Six immigrant families interviewed by the Associated Press, who experienced their first kidnapping and were detained until payment, explained how the system works. A Mexican federal official confirmed most of this. All asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

Mexican immigration agents encountered 925,000 undocumented immigrants through August of this year; This is well above last year’s annual total and three times the 2021 total. However, compared to previous years, they only deported 16,500 people.

The Rev. Heyman Vázquez, a priest in Ciudad Hidalgo on the banks of the Suchiate river that separates Mexico and Guatemala, sees it every day.

“They (the cartel) say who can pass and who can’t,” Vázquez said. “The number of immigrants they take in every day is huge, and they do it in front of the authorities.”

Pay to continue north
On Monday morning, Luis Alonso Valle, a 43-year-old Honduran traveling with his wife and two children, disembarked from a raft attached to the inner tubes and planks of the truck that had transported them to Mexico via Suchiate.

They had not gone even 50 meters towards Ciudad Hidalgo before three men approached on a motorcycle and told them they could not continue walking. They then left when they saw the journalists. The family looked scared.

At Ciudad Hidalgo’s central plaza, Valle asked for a minibus that could take them 23 miles (37 kilometers) to Tapachula, considered the main entry point into southern Mexico. The driver got into the car and whispered to the journalists to stop the recording. “They (organized crime) will stop me,” he said.

This is how immigrants often come to the farm. Taxi or truck drivers working for the cartel take them there and deliver them. They have to sleep on the floor.

“There were more than 500 people there, some of them had been there for 10-15 days,” said a Venezuelan woman who was released with her husband and two children on Sunday. “Whoever has no money stays, whoever decides to pay leaves,” he said.

A 28-year-old Ecuadorian baker was taken to a bank to withdraw money to save himself, his wife, his daughter and four other relatives. His family was covered until he returned.

After payment, immigrants are photographed and their skin is marked.

Armed men stop minibuses and taxis heading to Tapachula and check stamps. Those who are not with him are sent back. Immigrants said they were told to wash themselves when they arrived in Tapachula to avoid problems with other gangs.

According to Fray Matias de Cordova, a nonprofit in Tapachula, at least a third of the hundreds of migrants they have attended this year arrived with a stamp. Director Enrique Vidal Olascoaga said those who could not pay were often sexually assaulted.

None of the families interviewed by the AP said they were harmed.

More than 100 migrants released by security forces in Ciudad Hidalgo in September and a group of several dozen migrants shot by soldiers on Oct. 1 passed through similar locations, the official, who had knowledge of the migrants’ statements to investigators, said. kidnapping and extortion scenarios.

Cartel-controlled border
Organized crime’s tight grip on Mexico’s southern border is leading to escalating violence sparked by the fight between the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. The state of Chiapas is just one of their battlegrounds, but it plays a key role in controlling human, drug and arms smuggling routes from Central America. According to experts, immigrants have become the most lucrative commodity.

The increasingly aggressive presence of the cartels is becoming an obstacle to organizations trying to help immigrants. Earlier this month, gunmen killed an outspoken Catholic priest in Chiapas. Vidal said sometimes groups prevent migrants from receiving humanitarian aid.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said the government was fighting violence but refused to confront the cartels. He appears to be continuing tactics that began under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, by sending migrants by bike from north to south, draining their resources and keeping them away from the U.S. border, exposing them to more kidnappings and extortions.

Ciudad Hidalgo Mayor Elmer Vázquez claimed that he knew nothing about migrant shelters operating in the area and said his town had always taken care of migrants.

But Father Vázquez (no relation to the mayor), who has spent two decades advocating for immigrants, said the prosecutor’s office, the National Guard, the special prosecutor who handles crimes against immigrants, did nothing even when the crimes were reported.

“They collaborate with organized crime and of course make it look like they’re doing their job,” he said.

race against time
In August, the U.S. government expanded access to CBP One, an online portal used to schedule appointments to seek asylum at the border in southern Chiapas. Mexico requested the move to ease the pressure migrants feel to travel north to make appointments.

The Mexican government has opened “mobility corridors” to help migrants with CBP One appointments travel safely from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. Appointments are just a first step, but most applicants are allowed to wait through the lengthy process from within the US

However, Mexico’s National Migration Institute said it transported only 846 migrants from Tapachula to the northern border from September 9 to October 11. Others traveling on their own described being extorted by Mexican authorities and also kidnapped by cartels near the northern border and forced to miss appointments.

Donald Trump says he will dismantle CBP One and close other legal routes to enter the US

In Tapachula on Tuesday, hundreds of immigrants with confirmed CBP One appointments waited outside Mexican immigration offices for permits that would allow them to travel north.

Jeyson Uqueli, a 28-year-old Honduran, had slept outside the office to make sure he was the first in line when it opened. She was traveling alone but planned to reunite with her sister in New Orleans.

To have a chance of doing so, he had to reach the border between Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, by November 6 for his CBP One rendezvous. He planned to fly from Tapachula to the northern city of Monterrey and then take a bus to Matamoros.

He was nervous he wouldn’t make it on time but was relieved to make the appointment “because Donald Trump is going to come and get rid of them,” he said.

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AP journalists Tecun Uman, Matías Delacroix in Guatemala and Edgar Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.