Mexico City Jan. 4 (BNA): Mexico received a record 131,448 asylum applications last year, the country’s National Agency for Refugee Welfare reported on Monday.
Andres Ramirez Silva, the general coordinator of the Mexican Refugee Aid Commission (Kumar), said on Twitter that the number of requests had nearly doubled the record set in 2019. And the German news agency (dpa) reported that Mexico received 70,341 requests that year.
The increase came as immigrants faced greater obstacles in getting to the United States, the ultimate goal for most of them.
Kumar’s statistics showed that the majority of asylum seekers are Haitians, followed by Hondurans and Cubans, as well as Venezuelans and people from other Central American countries.
In 2021, the US government deported thousands of Haitians who settled in a temporary camp in South Texas, a deterrent factor that made thousands more intending to cross decide to stay in Mexico.
Courts have ordered the administration of US President Joe Biden to reinstate his predecessor Donald Trump’s so-called “stay in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until it is their turn to present their cases in the United States, something that could take months and even years.
MI