A march has begun from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas northward to the central part of the country, in protest of policies that make legal immigration status difficult to achieve.
Wednesday’s march set out from the border city of Tapachula, near Guatemala, and nearly 300 migrants, asylum seekers and supporters took part.
But the demonstration was overshadowed by the arrest one day earlier of one of its leaders, prominent immigration activist Luis Garcia Villagran.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the arrest in her morning news conference on Wednesday. She alleged that Garcia Villagran had been detained for taking part in human trafficking.
“That is the crime,” she said, adding that Garcia Villagran was “not an activist”.
She added that an arrest warrant had been pending for the activist for years. But it was unclear why his arrest was carried out now.
The nonprofit Pueblo Sin Fronteras, however, disputed Sheinbaum’s characterisation of Garcia Villagran.
“The detention of Luis Villagran, director and human rights defender, is an unacceptable assault,” the nonprofit’s head, Irineo Mujica, wrote in a post to social media.
“Luis Villagrán’s only ‘crime’ is to defend those who have no money or voice, and to tell the truth, which bothers the powerful. Stop criminalising human rights defenders!”
Mujica – who was detained himself in 2019 on similar charges, only to be released – argued that Garcia Villagran’s arrest was a political distraction.
“This is a smokescreen: dirty and corrupt politics to cover up the true networks of corruption,” he said.
Mujica and Garcia Villagran have both been prominent voices in a movement to make legal immigration pathways more accessible.
They have also been among the organisers associated with the trend of the migrant “caravans” that travel from southern Mexico to the United States border in recent years.
Some of those past caravans have involved thousands of people, many of whom banded together for protection against criminal networks, corrupt officials and other threats they may face as they migrate.
Migration northwards, however, has slowed, particularly since US President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January.
Trump quickly attempted to bar asylum claims at the border, a move that has spurred a legal backlash.
Last month, a court blocked his asylum ban on the basis that it created an “alternative immigration system” without deference to Congress’s laws.
But Trump’s policies have nevertheless had a dampening effect on immigration at the border. In June, US Customs and Border Protection recorded only 9,306 “encounters” with migrants and asylum seekers at the country’s southern border – a nearly 93 percent drop compared with the same period last year.
Wednesday’s march had a different objective than those past caravans, though, particularly as migrants and asylum seekers turn away from the US and seek other destinations.
Organisers of the march sought to draw attention to the slow processing time for asylum applications in Mexico and other hurdles to achieving legal immigration status.
It also served as a demonstration against Mexican policies that have sought to keep undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in the south of the country, away from the US border.
The Trump administration has pressured Mexico to crack down on immigration into the US, including through the threat of tariffs.
Garcia Villagran’s arrest in the hours leading up to the march, however, left some migrants and asylum seekers fearful of taking part in the march.
The news agency AFP obtained one message that was circulating among participants that read, “Hide, don’t let yourselves get caught.”
A Catholic priest who took part in Wednesday’s march, Heyman Vazquez, told The Associated Press news agency that Garcia Villagran’s arrest was “unjust”.
He added that the arrest revealed a sense of insecurity in the government over the question of migration. The solution, he explained, would be to make it easier for migrants and asylum seekers to obtain legal status, thereby removing the need for such protests.
