Mexico: Report finds violence is "comparable to war zones"

An estimated 500,000 people cross into Mexico every year[1]. The majority making up this massive forced migration flow originate from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, known as the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), one of the most violent regions in the world today.

Since 2012, the international medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been providing medical and mental health care to tens of thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing the NTCA’s extreme violence and travelling along the world’s largest migration corridor in Mexico. Through violence assessment surveys and medical and psychosocial consultations, MSF teams have witnessed and documented a pattern of violent displacement, persecution, sexual violence, and forced repatriation akin to the conditions found in the deadliest armed conflicts in the world today[2].

For millions of people from the NTCA region, trauma, fear and horrific violence are dominant facets of daily life. Yet it is a reality that does not end with their forced flight to Mexico. Along the migration route from the NTCA, migrants and refugees are preyed upon by criminal organisations, sometimes with the tacit approval or complicity of national authorities, and subjected to violence and other abuses — abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape — that can leave them injured and traumatised.

Despite existing legal protections under Mexican law, they are systematically detained and deported. Nearly 98 percent of NTCA citizens were captured by immigration authorities in 2015, with devastating consequences on their physical and mental health.

The findings of this report, based on surveys and medical programmatic data from the past two years, come against the backdrop of heightened immigration enforcement by Mexico and the United States, including the use of detention and deportation. Such practices threaten to drive more refugees and migrants into the brutal hands of smugglers or criminal organisations.

From January 2013 to December 2016, MSF teams have provided 33,593 consultations to migrants and refugees from the NTCA through direct medical care in several mobile health clinics, migrant centres and hostels — known locally as albergues — across Mexico.

Through these activities, MSF has documented the extensive levels of violence against patients treated in these clinics, as well as the mental health impact of trauma experienced prior to fleeing countries of origin and while on the move.

Since the program’s inception, MSF teams have expressed concern about the lack of institutional and government support to the people it is treating and supporting along the migration route. In 2015 and 2016, MSF began surveying patients and collecting medical data and testimonies. This was part of an effort by MSF to better understand the factors driving migration from the NTCA, and to assess the medical needs and vulnerabilities specific to the migrant and refugee population MSF is treating in Mexico.

The surveys and medical data were limited to MSF patients and people receiving treatment in MSF-supported clinics. Nevertheless, this is some of the most comprehensive medical data available on migrants and refugees from Central America. This report provides stark evidence of the extreme levels of violence experienced by people fleeing from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and underscores the need for adequate health care, support, and protection along the migration route through Mexico.

In 2015, MSF carried out a survey of 467 randomly sampled migrants and refugees in facilities the organisation supports in Mexico. We gathered additional data from MSF clinics from 2015 through December 2016. Key findings of the survey include:

Reasons for leaving: 

• Of those interviewed, almost 40 percent (39.2%) mentioned direct attacks or threats to themselves or their families, extortion or gang-forced recruitment as the main reason for fleeing their countries.
• Of all NTCA refugees and migrants surveyed, 43.5 percent had a relative who died due to violence in the last two years. More than half of Salvadorans surveyed (56.2 percent) had a relative who died due to violence in this same time span.
• Additionally, 54.8% of Salvadorans had been the victim of blackmail or extortion, significantly higher than respondents from Honduras or Guatemala.

Violence on the Journey: 

• 68.3 percent of the migrant and refugee populations entering Mexico reported being victims of violence during their transit toward the United States.
• Nearly one-third of the women surveyed had been sexually abused during their journey.
• MSF patients reported that the perpetrators of violence included members of gangs and other criminal organisations, as well as members of the Mexican security forces responsible for their protection.

According to medical data from MSF clinics from 2015 through December 2016:

• One-fourth of MSF medical consultations in the migrants/refugee program were related to physical injuries and intentional trauma that occurred en route to the United States.
• 60 percent of the 166 people treated for sexual violence were raped, and 40 percent were exposed to sexual assault and other types of humiliation, including forced nudity.
• Of the 1,817 refugees and migrants treated by MSF for mental health issues in 2015 and 2016, close to half (47.3 percent) were victims of direct physical violence en route, while 47.2 percent of this group reported being forced to flee their homes.

The MSF survey and project data from 2015-2016 show a clear pattern of victimization —  both as the impetus for many people to flee the NTCA and as part of their experience along the migration route. The pattern of violence documented by MSF plays out in a context where there is an inadequate response from governments, and where immigration and asylum policies disregard the humanitarian needs of migrants and refugees.

Despite the existence of a humanitarian crisis affecting people fleeing violence in the NTCA, the number of related asylum grants in the US and Mexico remains low. Given the tremendous levels of violence against migrants and refugees in their countries of origin and along the migration route in Mexico, the existing legal framework should provide effective protection mechanisms to victimised populations. Yet people forced to flee the NTCA are mostly treated as economic migrants by countries of refuge such as Mexico or the United States. Less than 4,000 people fleeing El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala were granted asylum status in 2016[3]. In addition, the government of Mexico deported 141,990 people from the NTCA. Regarding the situation in the US, by the end of 2015, 98,923 individuals from the NTCA had submitted requests for refugee or asylum status according to UNHCR[4]. Nevertheless, the number of asylums status granted to individuals from the NTCA has been comparatively low, with just 9,401 granted status since FY 2011[5].

As a medical humanitarian organisation that works in more than 60 countries, MSF delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, disasters, and exclusion from health care. The violence suffered by people in the NTCA is comparable to the experience in war zones where MSF has been present for decades. Murder, kidnappings, threats, recruitment by non-state armed actors, extortion, sexual violence and forced disappearance are brutal realities in many of the conflict areas where MSF provides support.

The evidence gathered by MSF points to the need to understand that the story of migration from the NTCA is not only about economic migration, but about a broader humanitarian crisis.

While there are certainly people leaving the NTCA for better economic opportunities in the United States, the data presented in this report also paints a dire picture of a story of migration from the NTCA as one of people running for their lives. It is a picture of repeated violence, beginning in NTCA countries and causing people to flee, and extending through Mexico, with a breakdown in people’s access to medical care and ability to seek protection in Mexico and the United States.

It is a humanitarian crisis that demands that the governments of Mexico and the United States, with the support of countries in the region and international organisations, rapidly scale up the application of legal protection measures —asylum, humanitarian visas, and temporary protected status — for people fleeing violence in the NTCA region; immediately cease the systematic deportation of NTCA citizens; and expand access to medical, mental health, and sexual violence care services for migrants and refugees.