Haitian being deported jumps off stairs while boarding plane in Mexico

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A group of 129 Haitian migrants were deported this Wednesday morning by the National Migration Institute (INM). The plane took off from the Tapachula International Airport and was destined for the city of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.

Until the last second, some of them tried to escape. In a video broadcast on social networks, a man in a red shirt jumps from the ladder to board and runs off the airport runway, followed by agents.

The video was posted on Twitter by José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, with the text “ In this video, a man jumps off the ladder and runs, pursued by immigration agents, while fleeing the plane that must carry him back to Haiti. Is this what the AMLO government calls voluntary returns? 

Men and women were taken from the Siglo 21 immigration station at approximately 7:00 in the morning and loaded into five white trucks, where they were transported to the Tapachula International Airport escorted by the Federal Protection Police (PPF) and elements of the National Guard (GN).

A Magni airline plane transported the Caribbean people detained in various INM operations to the Port-au-Prince International Airport, a statement reported.

For five months, waves of migrants from Haiti arrived in Tapachula and saturated the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) to process asylum status.

In Tapachula, located about 45 kilometers from the border with Guatemala, in August more than 30,000 Haitian migrants were stranded, in addition to a similar number of Central Americans, Cubans, Colombians, Venezuelans, among other nationalities, who complained the slowness of COMAR to grant appointments and procedures in the refugee application and of the INM for migratory regularization.

The Caribbeans also complained about the overpopulation of migrants in the city, lack of work, very high incomes, and discrimination and mistreatment from society.

On August 28, more than half a thousand Haitians, Central Americans, Cubans, Colombians, and Venezuelans decided to leave the city in a caravan, which was violently repressed by the National Institute of Migration and the National Guard until it was dismantled.

Three more caravans, made up of pregnant men and women and others with breastfeeding children, left for the northern border, which were also violently repressed and dismantled.

Other groups traveled to various parts of Chiapas with the consent of the federal government and managed to reach Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila; and on September 21 in a massive way they tried to enter the United States crossing in an area bordering the municipality of Del Río, in Texas; same that were repressed by border agents of the United States.

The wave of migrants from Haiti continues to arrive in Tapachula with the support of human traffickers who, in Tecún Umán, Guatemala, charge them $ 300 to give them a place to sleep, food, and the crossing into Mexican territory.

While, for another similar amount, the “polleros” offer to transfer them to Tapachula, taking them along dirt roads and lost points, to evade immigration surveillance.

Activists announced on October 24 the departure of a large caravan from this city, with or without papers, to Mexico City.

Mexico Daily Post