Olga Sánchez Martínez, the founder of a shelter in Tapachula, Chiapas, confesses that most of them are women who travel with children, and in the worst cases, not being able to keep them, they choose to abandon them or give them away.
In Chiapas, a serious problem is being presented by the Central Americans who leave their countries of origin to seek political asylum in the United States, and as they pass through Mexico, they saturate the shelters.
Most of them are women traveling with children and some minors who are unaccompanied.
On this, Olga Sánchez Martínez, national Human Rights prize and founder of the Jesús el Buen Pastor del Pobre y el Migrante shelter, confessed to being surprised by the arrival in Mexico of children and adolescents who travel alone, as well as women who are still in breastfeeding stage and prefer to flee their country due to situations of violence, poverty, insecurity among other factors, mainly from Honduras.
“Migration has changed, you never saw that issue of children traveling alone. I have been working with migrants for 30 years and I was surprised that two buses from the National Migration Institute [INM] brought unaccompanied minors up to 2 years old; I was shocked, I had never experienced a wave of unaccompanied children and adolescents, ”she declared.
Sánchez Martínez has dedicated more than 31 years to feed, heal and give asylum to migrants who have been mutilated by the railroad.
At the shelter, she declares that she has received a huge number of breastfeeding women, who travel with up to five children and adolescents, some malnourished from the trip, ill due to inclement weather and the unhealthy places they have to visit.
These immigrants are stranded in Tapachula, Chiapas on the southern border of Mexico, where they have no opportunity to work.
She added that the shelter accommodates an average of 450 to 500 foreigners, of which more than 200 are children of breastfeeding age and adolescents, women and men, to whom she provides all three meals, medical attention, and medicines.
Some of the migrants, the majority from Honduras, arrived personally to request an accommodation, and others were taken by the INM, coming from the borders of Tijuana, Baja California; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Piedras Negras, Coahuila.
Source: El Universal
