From the March-April 2020 issue of News & Letters

Despite Mexican President López Obrador’s sweet words about humanitarian treatment of Central American immigrants entering Mexico, the truth is horribly different.

On Mexico’s southern border: By the hundreds National Guard troops—supposedly organized to fight narco-traffickers and extreme violence—have instead been mobilized to prevent immigrants from crossing into Mexico. Tear gas and batons, mass arrests and immediate deportations, family separations, are all being used.

On our northern border: AMLO, as López Obrador is known, has accepted Trump’s draconian “Stay in Mexico” requirement for those seeking asylum in the U.S. Only a tiny handful of asylum requests have been granted, with close to 60,000 immigrants crammed at the border still awaiting this so-called justice.

Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders reports that 80% of those awaiting decisions on the border have been subjected to violence.

The vast majority of migrants are fleeing from gangs, poverty and violence in their places of origin. Why are so many being treated in an inhuman way in Mexico and in the United States?

—E.W.