In a replay of his 2016 campaign, President Trump is whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment to stoke his base for the midterm election. But it will do nothing to stop what is a slow moving train wreck in Latin America.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/J. Ordonez
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"Remember the midterms", US President Donald Trump reminded his 55 million followers on Twitter on Tuesday in a sequence of tweets focused on the so-called migrant caravan that is making its way through Mexico towards the US border.
If there was ever any doubt that Trump would forego the attention-grabbing visuals of thousands of Latin American migrants braving brutal conditions to trek tens of miles per day in hopes of reaching the US, a series of presidential tweets sent out in the past couple of days erased it.
Using military jargon to describe the caravan and alleging — without offering evidence — that criminals and "unknown Middle Easterners" were part of the group, Trump faulted Democrats and US courts for standing in the way of a tougher immigration policy, and El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the home countries of most of the migrants, for not preventing them from making the journey.
Honduran refugees risk their lives to get to US border
Refugees from Central America are trying to draw attention to the human rights abuses they face while trying to get to the US. Sanne Derks documented their experiences in and around a shelter in Apizaco, Mexico.
Image: Getty Images/D. McNew
On the move
Most Central American migrants travel on top of cargo trains, to reduce the risk of being stopped and deported. Buses are more often stopped by migration officers. Crossing the American border is a challenge. In case they cannot afford a "coyote" — a human trafficker— many of the young men consider carrying drugs as a means to pay for the border crossing that is controlled by drug cartels.
Image: DW/S. Derks
Risking life and limb
Catching a moving train is not without danger: Alex Garcia, who used to be a farmer, lost his leg while trying to get off a moving train. He is recovering at a refugee shelter and doesn't know where to go afterwards.
Image: DW/S. Derks
Keeping a low profile
According to Miquel Angel (above) the biggest risk along the road is being kidnapped by organized criminal groups, like the Zetas. Most migrants do not carry a cellphone or a notebook, in case they are caught and extorted.
Image: DW/S. Derks
Respite from the hazardous journey
The migrants try to find shelter along the route in one of Mexico’s 52 albergues, or shelters. In Apizaco they are allowed 24 hours to rest, except when they are the victim of a crime or accident. All four men in the picture have permission to stay longer, as they were either shot or otherwise physically injured during their journey.
Image: DW/S. Derks
The waiting game
Sometimes the migrants have to wait for days for the next train. Delmin Flores (center), and his two cousins Alejandro Deras and Luis Deras sit in the sun for hours in front of the shelter. They were forced to leave their coffee-growing region in Honduras after coffee prices plummeted. At night, they risk being robbed or killed by organ trade traffickers.
Image: DW/S. Derks
Clambering to safety
Hardly any children or women take the journey by train. The risk of falling into the hands of traffickers or being violated is very high. This woman and child are accompanied by the husband, who has tried the journey more than 17 times.
Image: DW/S. Derks
A close call
Herdin Varga recounts how he was shot by a guard on the train. The bullets hit him in his arm and neck. One centimeter to the right and he would be dead. He's been given permission to recover in the shelter and is in the process of requesting a temporary permit to travel Mexico so that he can continue his trip by bus.
Image: DW/S. Derks
Praying for safe passage
The shelter was founded and funded in 2010 by the Catholic priest Ramiro Sanchez. It later turned into a civil organization, independent of the government. Before meals are served, refugees pray together. Many of the migrants are religious and believe that God will provide protection during their journey.
Image: DW/S. Derks
On the outside looking in
If they've checked out of the shelter, migrants cannot enter again to spend the night. This rule has been installed to protect the safety of the employees who fear that the migrants may have been come into contact with human traffickers. "The shelter is for humanitarian aid, not for people making business out of it," shelter employee Sergio Luna told DW.
Image: DW/S. Derks
All in vain
This group of migrants boarded the only train that passed that day, but it stopped immediately after leaving the railway station. They were forced to walk back to the shelter and try their luck next time.
Image: DW/S. Derks
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Tested playbook
"The timing of this could not be a larger gift to President Trump and the Republican Party in advance of the midterm elections", said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Wilson Center's Latin America program. She noted that, ahead of competitive midterm elections, Trump — by associating immigrants with crime — was simply going back to his electorally successful 2016 campaign playbook.
"I think that's precisely why President Trump is going to his Twitter account and making all kinds of harsh statements to appeal to his base and to stoke that kind of fear", said Arnson. "There has been a consistent messaging from this White House to equate migrants with violent crime and the evidence is actually quite the contrary."
Trump's controversial effort to turn the plight of thousands of migrants desperate enough to make the consequential decision to leave their homes to go on an arduous journey they hope will somehow enable them to find a safe haven in the United States is unlikely to sway any undecided voters. But it may well succeed in rallying his core base of supporters, which in a close election could be enough to eke out a victory.
"This election is going to be won by turnout", said Karen Alter, a political scientist at Northwestern University. "Trump is trying to dial up the fear dial to distract to an area where he is being perceived as stronger, mainly his willingness to crack down on immigration, in hopes that that affects the turnout."
Donald Trump has seized the migrant caravan as an election issueImage: Reuters/K. Lamarque
Key issue for GOP
A Pew Research Center poll published earlier this month appears to support the strategy of focusing on immigration to boost Republican turnout. "Illegal immigration is the highest-ranked national problem among GOP voters, but it ranks lowest among 18 issues for Democratic voters", found Pew researchers.
Trump's push to elevate the migrant caravan to an urgent national security issue may bring in Republican votes, but it is disingenuous and does nothing to solve a migrant crisis that has been ongoing in ebbs and flows since 2014 when the first groups of unaccompanied minors entered the US during the Obama administration, noted the scholars.
"The larger issue is that there is a slow moving train wreck going on in Latin America of governments that are falling apart and they are generating refugee crises", said Alter.
In El Salvador, Honduras and other countries the security situation for people has become so dire now that families simply feel they cannot stay there. With governments unable to provide even the most basic protection for the people, corrupt police forces and ultra-violent gangs and drug cartels taking over, the choice for citizens is easy.
"They are leaving out of complete desperation", said Alter. "And since they are leaving out of desperation, nothing that President Trump yells in his tantrum — 'I am going to remove foreign aid, I am going to build a wall' — none of that can stop desperate people who are literally facing life and death situations."
What's more, nixing foreign aid to the deeply impoverished nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras will only increase the country's troubles and potentially cause even more people to seek refugee in the US.
"There is nothing that could be more counterproductive in the medium and long term, because the only lasting resolution to the migrant crisis is to be found in the region and to changing the conditions of deprivation and violence that continue to cause people to flee because they feel they have no future and no safety within their own borders", said Arnson.
The migrants are fleeing the violence in their own countriesImage: picture-alliance/dpa/I. Sanchez
Address root causes
But that, said the scholars, would require the change of US policy toward a region that it has ignored far too long to its own and the region's detriment.
"We are going to need to pay much more attention to our backyard than we have been paying attention to it recently", said Alter. "And the good news is that we don't actually have Muslim fundamentalist terrorists in Latin America and that these are really internal crises that you actually might have a chance to address."
But instead of focusing on the much more difficult task, of addressing the root causes of the ongoing migrant crisis in the region, Trump has chosen the very convenient path "to throw these chaos bombs to distract the media, to distract the American public and to try to motivate people to turn out in the midterm elections."
Central American immigrants turn to Mexico
Most migrants to the United States from the so-called "Northern Triangle" of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are staying in Mexico for now — because of Donald Trump's new immigration policies.
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
No longer first choice
In a migrant shelter in the southern Mexican city of Tenosique, near the Guatemalan border, a refugee from Honduras says he originally planned to move to the United States with his family. Trump's election has changed everything. "I wanted to go to the United States with my family, but we've seen that the new government there has made things harder."
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
Lingering in Mexico
Concepcion Bautista from Guatemala cradles her newborn son in the same migrant shelter. She says she plans to head for the United States, but will linger in Mexico to see how US President Donald Trump's immigration policies play out. Her goal is to reunite with her family up north...
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
A mere transit country?
…but for the time being, she believes applying for asylum in Mexico is a smarter move. Mexican asylum data and testimony from migrants in Tenosique suggest that although fewer Central Americans are trying to enter the US, plenty are still fleeing their poor, violent home countries, with many deciding to stay longer in Mexico, which has traditionally been a transit country.
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
Tough immigration policies
The Trump administration has pointed out a sharp decline in immigrant detentions in the first few months of this year as a vindication for the president's tough immigration policies. The measures are already having another effect. In California, where farmers usually rely on workers from Mexico to bring in the harvest, many Mexicans are staying away, preferring to find work in their own country.
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
Asylum applications on the rise
Migrants from Central America play football in the migrant shelter in Tenosique. The number of people applying for asylum in Mexico has soared by more than 150 percent since Trump was elected president. These days, Mexican immigrants would rather set up in Canada than the United States.
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
Human smugglers up the price
One man from Guatemala says the prices charged by people smugglers have risen sharply since Trump took office, now hovering around $10,000 (9,100 euros), up from about $6,000 a few years ago. Migrants sit below a mural in Mexico with the words: "Our demand is minimal: justice."
Image: Reuters/C. Jasso
A new home
With Mexico's immigration authorities controlling migration more assiduously, Central Americans were forced to take more isolated, dangerous routes where the chances of being mugged were higher. "We've gone north several times, but every time it's got harder," says one man, who was deported from the United States in December. "Now, it's better if we travel alone, along new routes."
