(Ciudad Juárez) The authorities of the city of Ciudad Juárez, in northern Mexico on the border with the United States, dismantled on Monday a camp of migrants set up in front of the town hall, around fifty of whom refused to leave the premises.
Civil protection officials intervened in the camp, mostly housing Venezuelans, to transfer the migrants to another site provided by the town hall and equipped with water, showers and electricity, noted an AFP journalist. .
Some 120 migrants agreed to be relocated but around 50 refused to leave their tents made from plastic and cardboard.
About fifty police officers then came to dismantle the shelters and encountered resistance from these migrants who railed against them before resigning themselves for the most part to the new site, some leaving to seek another place to spend the night.
Migrants have been wary of authorities in Ciudad Juárez since a roundup of dozens of them last March. On the night of March 27 to 28, a fire in a detention center in the city killed 40 migrants, most of them by asphyxiation on the spot.
Thousands of migrants are currently estimated to be in Mexican communities bordering the United States where they hope to seek asylum.
The arrival of undocumented foreigners, mostly Venezuelans, has increased in recent months as the expiry of a measure adopted during the pandemic by the United States to lock down the country, Title 42, approaches.
This measure, put in place in 2020 to fight against COVID-19, was replaced on May 11 by a new system with, in particular, restrictions on the right to asylum.