HomeNewsBriefDrug Violence Deters Central American Migrants: Mexico Officials
BRIEF

Drug Violence Deters Central American Migrants: Mexico Officials

HUMAN SMUGGLING / 12 OCT 2011 BY GEOFFREY RAMSEY EN

Mexican immigration officials have said that the surge of drug violence in north Mexico has caused a massive drop in undocumented Central American migrants traveling through the country to the U.S.

According to the director of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM), Salvador Beltran del Rio, there has been a reduction of nearly 70 percent in the number of Central American migrants passing through the country in the past five years. The estimate is based on the number of migrants detained in Mexico, which fell from 433,000 in 2005 to 140,000 last year.

Speaking at a conference on migration on Monday, Beltran said that the pattern has continued in the first few months of 2011. From January to August of this year, only 46,914 undocumented migrants were apprehended, which the INM official blamed on the deepening involvement of Mexican drug cartels in migrant trafficking, extortion and kidnapping. Out of every 10 migrants who attempt to go northward, Belran said, six employ a “coyote,” who they pay to transport them across the U.S. border.

As InSight Crime has reported, these individuals frequently take advantage of the migrants, threatening them or their family members with violence in order to extract large sums of money. The risky predicament of undocumented migrants was illustrated last August, when 72 Central Americans were allegedly murdered by the Zetas in San Fernando, Tamaulipas near the U.S.-Mexico border.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

DISPLACEMENT / 11 MAY 2022

Mexico's produce industry has taken another hit from cartel violence, as tens of millions of dollars worth of peaches are…

CHAPITOS / 9 JAN 2023

Mexico has arrested one of El Chapo's sons, Ovidio, at a bitter cost. But will it make a difference to…

EXTORTION / 17 JUN 2022

Buying fresh chicken in the Mexican city of Chilpancingo proved almost impossible this week. Almost all the chicken vendors had…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…