TAPACHULA, Mexico – Some 500 migrants from Central America, Venezuela and elsewhere fought with Mexican police, National Guard and immigration officers in southern Mexico in one of the first such marches this year.
The migrants described the march as a traditional annual protest related to Holy Week, and those at the front carried a white cross, as others have done in previous years.
However, this year the protest came two weeks early and some participants said they would go far beyond the usual short march and try to reach the U.S. border.
In a clash with National Guard officers and immigration agents, the migrants used the cross they were carrying as a battering ram to break through the Guard lines, shattering the wooden cross.
The officers, who had riot shields, batons and what appeared to be an irritant spray, detained some marchers, AP reported. The two sides exchanged blows and many migrants left behind knapsacks in the melee.
Some managed to break through and disappear down dirt roads and paths, but many of the rest of the marchers took refuge in a church just a few miles outside of Tapachula.
The migrants set out from the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. Migrants have complained they have been essentially confined to Tapachula by the slow processing of their asylum cases and that they are unable to find work in the border state of Chiapas that would allow them to support their families.
“They are practically holding us prisoners; they do not allow us to leave this state because we are not regularized here,” said Venezuelan migrant Noreydi Chávez. “They require us to get a visa, but we never get any answers. We fill out paperwork, but they never process it.”
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