They face robbery, ex­tortion and kidnapping, of­ten at the hands of officials

by Mexico News Daily

Almost a month ago the federal government announced a temporary closure of the southern border to nonessential traf­fic. This week, the White House announced that Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala would deploy troops “to make crossing the borders more difficult.”

Yet migrants continue to stream into the country en route to the United States. According to a report published Wednesday by The Guardian, Central American migrants were crossing into Mexico on a recent morning at Fron­tera Corozal, a remote border town on the Usu­macinta River in Chiapas, without having to show documents to anyone.

The newspaper said the situation “looked like business as usual,” noting that groups of men, women and children were disem­barking from boats onto Mexican soil before get­ting into taxis and speed­ing past an immigration of­fice to a crossroads. There they boarded vans for the next leg of their journey north: an approximately 150-kilometer trip to the town of Palenque, Chiapas.

There are police check­points on the Frontera Coro­zal-Palenque highway, but according to migrants, they were able to pass by paying — or were robbed by the officers they encountered.

“They’ve taken our money, and now we’re dead broke,” 27-year-old Christian, part of a group of Honduran construction workers, told The Guardian.

“And now we have to deal with the military. We need to figure out how we get north. We are al­ways fighting and figuring out a way to get there.”

Shortly after he took of­fice in late 2018, President López Obrador pledged to clean up Mexico’s immi­gration and customs forces, which he said were “rotten to the core.” He also vowed that his administration would treat migrants with respect and give them protection.

But human rights activ­ists say that soldiers, police officers and immigration officials continue to com­mit crimes against mi­grants, including robbery, extortion and kidnapping.

“It’s a cartel,” said Gabriel Romero, director of a migrant shelter near Mexico’s bor­der with Guatemala. “They [the authorities] are acting in cahoots with [smugglers] … with taxi and bus drivers. It’s a network taking advan­tage of migrants,” he said.

Still, migrants flee­ing poverty and violence in countries such as Hon­duras, El Salvador and Guatemala are prepared to risk their lives in their quest to reach the United States.

Even increased enforce­ment — the government de­ployed the National Guard in 2019 to stem migration flows and thus appease then United States president Donald Trump — failed to stop Central Ameri­cans and people from more dis­tant countries, including Haiti, Cuba and even African na­tions, from attempting to reach the United States via a long journey that includes cross­ing Mexico’s southern border.

Crackdowns instead have forced migrants to take riskier, more remote routes to enter and travel through Mexico. They are consequently ex­posed to an even greater risk of becoming victims of crimes such as robbery, rape, abduction and murder.

The latest crackdown on migrants may be even less ef­fective in stopping the flows of people, according to Tona­tiuh Guillén, a former chief of Mexico’s National Immigra­tion Institute who resigned in 2019 after the federal gov­ernment buckled in the face of Trump’s threat to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican goods if the country didn’t do more to curb migration.

by Jeanne Smits Paris correspondent

On Sunday, a ‘massive march’ took place in San Juan in support of the father

SAN JUAN, Argentina, April 27, 2021— Franco Spadding, a young man from San Juan, Argentina, is pleading for the life of his unborn baby in the Argentinian courts after his wife decided to ask for a legal abortion. The couple separated over the decision. The woman is over 12 weeks pregnant and has refused to keep her baby until it is born, although her child’s father is willing to take care of the baby right after birth, letting the mother “get on with her life.” It is not clear at the time of writing whether the abortion has taken place or not.

On Sunday, a “massive march” took place in San Juan in support of the father. Eduardo Cáceres, a deputy to the National Assembly of Argentina, joined the march for Spadding’s rights, asking for the adoption of a current draft law he authored that would “seek equality between men and women and put an end to the wars of the sexes.”

The “Ley Alejo,” as it is called, calls “sexual violence” any attack on a man’s right to decide about his “sexual or reproductive life,” for instance by preventing him through abortion from being a father. The same would go for a woman obtaining the implantation of an embryo without her partner’s consent. The draft law has the support of over 50 NGOs and underscores that there are many complaints of men reporting violent acts on the part of their female partner. One of its motivations is that men are often accused of sexual abuse of their children in divorce cases, but that a study has revealed that in two cases out of three, the claims are false.

The Argentinian press has widely commented on the court proceedings of Franco Spadding, characterizing them as a test case for the rights for the “thousands and thousands” of men who don’t have their say when their partner opts for an abortion, which is free and legal on the sole demand of the woman in the country since the beginning of 2021, up to 14 weeks of gestation — with doctors being obliged to perform the act within 10 days of the request, or refer the woman to a non-objecting colleague.

U.S. Canada World Catholic He also stated: “I simply want Justice to understand that my son and I are also persons and we have rights.

It is a very difficult fight; the days go by and we are running out of time.” He explained that he and his expartner had “lost the capacity to have a dialogue” over the case because they “think differently.”

In a televised interview published on Sunday by Canal 8 San Juan, Spadding explained that when their pregnancy test turned positive, his partner was at first apparently very glad and followed the usual health exams and ultrasounds, in which Franco took part. But she was also worried about their financial capacities and her own youth (the couple married in 2018) and, according to Spadding, expressed hesitations.

She ended up going to a social service, asking for an abortion “behind his back,” also making the request in his name. It was he who left the couple’s house over her insistence on getting an abortion.

By that time Franco had seen his child on the ultrasound and heard its heartbeat. “When you see un ultrasound, you see the baby alive … and to think that such a barbarian act can have taken place … I have no words,” he told a reporter from Canal 8. Unfortunately, Judge Marianela Lopez declared herself incompetent at the end of the week, explaining that the case should be taken to a civil court and not to a family magistrate. On the Canal 8 show, Spadding called on the judge to reflect on her decision: “I would ask this lady, if she is a mother, if she has nieces and nephews, regardless of the jurisdiction. A person, in this case a judge, must have the capacity to understand and render justice. Justice has to determine whether it is for good or for bad … let it be in her conscience or in the conscience of any judge.” “The father simply doesn’t exist. Why must I be an accomplice of something I don’t want and don’t accept?”, he said. (Lifesite)