The United States is seeing an increase in immigration from Hondurans and Guatemalans because cartels are telling them that it is time to enter “in families” without being deported, Homeland Security spokesman Luis Miranda said on Thursday.
“We have seen an increase in immigration from Honduras and Guatemala in the last two months,” the Deputy Secretary of Communications for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said at a virtual press conference with Honduran journalists.
Although he lacked comparative figures, he specified that “in the last two months, approximately 30,000 people [from Honduras] have arrived, 50 or 60% […] in family groups.”
He explained that “cartels” and other “criminal organizations” are “telling families that this is the time to travel” because “they will not be deported.”
“In many cases [people] are believing the lies of criminals, smugglers, coyotes,” Miranda stressed.
He lamented that the flow of people is controlled “by cartels” that “are carrying out violence, extortion, kidnappings” and other abuses against people who emigrate, because for them migration “is a business.”
Miranda pointed out that deportations do not stop and in the first two months – after the policy that allowed quick deportations supposedly to curb Covid-19 was rescinded – “we deported more than 85,000 people,” including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to Mexico.
He warned that those who enter illegally risk “being banned from entering the United States” for more than five years, facing “criminal consequences” and losing the possibility of entering through “legal channels.”
He stressed that the United States is doing “a lot to expand those legal channels” and cited “more than 65,000 additional visas allocated for temporary workers and non-agricultural sectors this year” as an example. Twenty thousand were assigned to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
And “we are in the process of working with the State Department and other countries throughout the hemisphere to establish safe mobility centers. This will be very important because what […] is sought is to create pathways not only to the United States but also to countries like Canada and Spain,” so there will be “greater opportunities.”
