Migrants forced to dangerous routes

ARRIAGA, Mexico -- Jose Vallecillo, a 41-year-old metalworker from Las Manos, Honduras, has a good-paying job welding steel freight containers waiting for him in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, at a factory where he's worked before and the owner invited him to return.

But getting there has proved much harder than expected: Vallecillo, wife Sandra and 4-year-old daughter Brittany have endured a fruitless wait for visas, spent all their money on food and transportation, and escaped a police raid in which hundreds were arrested and hidden out in the countryside.

Still, he remains determined to make it to Monterrey one way or another.

The family is a prime example of how Mexico's crackdown on migration is not cutting off the flow of Central Americans, but rather forcing migrants into the shadows and greater danger, despite government assurances the central thrust of its policy is to protect them.

For months, Central Americans have banded together in caravans and employed a 'safety in numbers' strategy, although efforts to discourage the large groups now have migrants wandering woods, swamps and rail lines in small bands of one or two dozen, exposed to the elements and also at greater risk of being preyed upon by criminals.

Vallecillo set out with the equivalent of $680 in savings from Honduras. He'd heard Mexico was handing out visas to migrants and decided it was time to go to the factory job.

But hope turned to disillusionment when he found Mexico wasn't handing out humanitarian visas at the border anymore, and the work visas it offered allow migrants to work only in poor southern states such as Chiapas and Oaxaca where pay is low. The slow pace of visa processing has angered migrants so much they have scuffled with police and immigration agents on a pair of occasions.

After 27 days waiting for the visa immigration officials promised but endlessly put off, Vallecillo and his family had enough.

They joined the caravan of around 3,000 people passing through southern Mexico and then fled Monday's raid, hiding in a church and spending that night in the woods. By Wednesday they were sleeping under the stars next to some railroad tracks after local authorities in Arriaga, Chiapas, ran them out of the city park.

"They didn't want to see migrants there," Vallecillo said. "Once you run out of money, and you can't bathe or change clothes, people start looking at you differently, like the classic stereotype of a migrant."

His daughter has taken to eating seed pods from the ground. The family is now looking at hopping aboard a freight train for the rest of the trip, because they no longer have a dime.

A man of calm demeanor, Vallecillo's resentment is nonetheless palpable. He said he has always worked, tries to keep clean and doesn't like being looked at as a transient person.

"Why did they have to deceive us?" Vallecillo asked. "If they weren't going to give us visas, why did they make us wait? At least they could have gotten out of the way and let us go through. We'd be in Monterrey by now, with a decent life."

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's promises of a new, more humane approach to migration seem to be melting -- under U.S. pressure -- into the old, deportation-oriented policies of his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, who launched a crackdown in 2014 including police raids on the train line Vallecillo now hopes to catch north. Many migrants fear raids on the train may start again.

Jorge Valladares, 35, and four friends from El Progreso, Honduras, have been walking and hopping freight trains for a week, avoiding the highways where numerous immigration checkpoints have sprung up. They are determined to reach the United States; but traveling on the trains they have had to develop a safety protocol of waking each other up whenever one dozes off, to ensure nobody falls off.

"It's dangerous to fall asleep," Valladares said. "We are going to take the train, walk through woods, over mountains, but God willing, we are going to make it."

Mexico has deported thousands of migrants in recent months and also issued more than 15,000 humanitarian visas, but officials say they are now being more selective about who gets them. Those detained in the raid this week were said to have refused to register for the regional visa letting migrants stay in southern Mexico. Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said migrants' human rights are a priority.

Officials commonly use the term "rescuing" to describe detentions of migrants, and some do end up in dangerous situations in need of help, such as when they're trafficked in hot, overcrowded tractor-trailers.

On Wednesday federal police and immigration agents picked up two Guatemalan couples and their two babies from the side of a highway in Oaxaca as temperatures soared near 100 degrees. The migrants were so exhausted from the heat they didn't even try to run, which might have been impossible with the babies, anyhow.