by VALENTINA GLOCKNER & ELISA SARDAO COLARES
The Mexican state legitimizes deportations and family separation by veiling these violent interventions as “protection practices.”
This is the fifth article in a series on child migration from the Infancias y Migración Working Group. New articles go up on Fridays. Para leer la versión en español, haz clic aquí.
On February 13, 2018, local and national media reported an operation led by military and state security forces had managed to “locate” and “rescue” 301 migrants who had been kidnapped in the city of Matamoros, on Mexico’s northeastern border. Juan (not his real name) was one of the 229 people held in one of various safe houses while an organized crime group threatened and extorted his family members.
Before being kidnapped, Juan had traveled for 30 hours hidden in the back of a trailer truck, crammed with dozens of migrants trying to cross Mexico en route to the northern border. After the rescue operation, Juan, like the rest of the group, was handed over to authorities. The National Migration Institute (INM) kept him detained without any access to consular services or legal support for about three weeks at the international bridge that connects Matamoros, Tamaulipas to the city of Brownsville, Texas.
While these experiences would be traumatic for anybody, they had an even greater impact on Juan, who at the time was only four years old. Unfortunately, Juan would also have to confront another traumatic experience that only migrant children face. Although Juan traveled accompanied by his father and father’s partner and they had not been separated throughout the entire journey, the state apparatus of migration control categorized Juan as an “unaccompanied migrant minor.” Since his father did not have documentation proving their relationship, the authorities separated them and deported Juan’s father a couple weeks later.