Jose Luis Gonzalez
CHIHUAHUA, Mexico (Reuters) – Migrants trying to avoid arrest set fire to blankets and mattresses at a camp in northern Mexico’s Chihuahua as government forces raided the site in the early hours of Saturday.
The crackdown near the US border comes ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday. Donald Trump has accused the Mexican government of not doing enough to curb migration to the United States and threatened sweeping tariffs.
About 250 Mexican officials, including National Guard military police in riot gear, surrounded the encampment around midnight, according to a Reuters witness.
Witnesses said migrants began setting fire to mattresses and blankets in protest and tried to flee the scene with their babies and belongings.
No deaths or injuries were reported as a result of the fire, but the fire was extinguished within an hour.
Mexico’s immigration office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An immigration official who was not authorized to speak to reporters told Reuters that the goal of the operation was to take migrants to Mexico’s southern border with instructions to return to their home countries.
It is unclear how many people have been detained.
Among the 150 migrants, many of them Venezuelan families, were heading north to the United States after staying at a camp in Chihuahua City, about 360 kilometers from Ciudad Juárez, a border city across from El Paso, Texas.
Daniel Barrios, a Venezuelan migrant who was traveling with a woman carrying a baby and a child carrying a shiny blue backpack, said he was startled by the sudden police presence.
“They surrounded the camp. They said they were just going to talk and do inspections and things like that,” he said.
“ say (WA:) Me, is it logical to bring in the entire police force and the military to do tests in camps that can be done during the day?”
When Barrios saw the officials from a distance, he interrupted, saying, “We have to move.”
Another family who escaped the camp said they were confused and scared. A woman held her two children close and sobbed, while two men held infants in their arms, and red smoke billowed high into the sky behind them.
“The police and migration officials have come. We arrived at this shelter today and we don’t know what’s happening,” one man said. “We are confused. We are scared.”
