Nowhere to turn: Haitians fear discrimination thwarting dream life in Mexico

Sitting on a wooden bench at a migrant shelter on Guatemala’s border with Mexico, Jean rattles off how much he and his wife paid to travel from Chile: $1,200 to a coyote for a bus north to Colombia, $100 to cross the Gulf of Urabá, and $400 to another smuggler to traverse the deadly Darién Gap, where they were abandoned to trek five days through the jungle to Panama.

They spent even more of their scant resources moving through Central America, staying at shelters until they reached the Suchiate River, just shy of Mexico. The journey from Chile took three weeks and came nearly three years after fleeing their native Haiti. Jean, who Devex is identifying by a pseudonym due to his immigration status, left the island nation in 2019 because of widespread kidnapping and murder, as well as the dismal chance of finding work.

“Being an immigrant is very difficult; it’s a sad and miserable experience,” Jean, who is 28, told Devex in Haitian Creole through an interpreter. “Lack of sleep, lack of food, and praying to God to be able to arrive fast and [escape] all the bad people.”

While he and his wife hope for their dream life in Mexico — after stints in Chile, Brazil, and Suriname — many Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers don’t find it such a welcoming place after years and thousands of miles on the road.

Devex interviewed almost two dozen Haitian migrants and refugees — and the NGOs helping them — who spoke of the challenges, and sometimes outright hostility, they face from Mexican authorities, aid agencies, and residents as non-Spanish speakers with little access to legal information in their native Creole.

The number of Haitians like Jean traveling through South America has skyrocketed in recent years, with many seeking asylum in Mexico while others head to the United States. Of more than 130,000 asylum-seekers in Mexico last year, almost 40% were Haitians.

Most settled first in various South American countries, hoping to make lives there.

“I just want to find a place where I feel comfortable and not humiliated, a place where I won’t be a victim of racism,” Jean said. “I’d like to get documents in Mexico, because I’m scared that if I move to the U.S. they’ll deport me and send me back to Haiti.”

Two officials from COMAR and UNHCR said the issue isn’t one of systemic discrimination, but such cases may occasionally arise due to capacity constraints — especially in light of the recent surge in Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers, which last year swelled to a record 51,000 from just 5,500 in 2019.

COMAR has “a clear institutional anti-discrimination policy,” the agency’s chief coordinator, Andrés Ramírez, told Devex.

“However, it is possible that some isolated cases could have occurred,” he added, saying that these “can be considered as mistreatment as a desperate yet unacceptable reaction of some civil servants in a situation where COMAR’s precarious operational capacity, particularly in Tapachula, almost led the institution to its collapse.”

Ramirez, who previously spent 28 years working for UNHCR, said that he would “intensify the message to all staff through training and by establishing effective preventive and reactive measures” and that COMAR would work with UNHCR to establish “joint training activities.”

A spokesperson for UNHCR denied that the organization engaged in discrimination but noted that “humanitarian economic assistance is not for everyone and priority is given to the most vulnerable people under the targeting criteria.”

The average eligibility of all nationalities seeking UNHCR assistance in Mexico is 29.52%, as of June 23. About 28% of Haitians are eligible, the spokesperson said.

Despite a yearslong increase in the flow of Haitians into Mexico, organizations and government agencies still don’t have enough Creole-speaking staffers.

“We hire translators; however, since the numbers [last year] were that high … of course we did have problems, and we didn’t have enough translators for us to communicate properly,” Ramírez said. “That was one of the main and most important difficulties that we faced in dealing with the Haitians. Now the situation is a bit better.”

UNHCR has struggled to recruit enough Creole interpreters in Tapachula, said Jacqueline Villafaña Amézquita, assistant protection officer at the agency. Applicants often fail the language exam because they lack the technical legal vocabulary required in both Creole and Spanish.

The concentration of asylum-seekers and refugees in Tapachula is high because Mexican law stipulates they must stay where they apply for asylum — a provision intended to stop them from heading to the U.S. border after seeking protections. Mexico’s southern border is heavily militarized to prevent the move northward, and the Suchiate River crossing is patrolled by the country’s National Guard to detect unauthorized movements.

The stakes are high for asylum-seekers who cannot untangle the complex web of gaining legal status in Mexico. Some risk being deported back to a country that they have not seen for decades and that has never fully recovered from a devastating 2010 earthquake.

Failure to understand information from COMAR and UNHCR has disastrous consequences for refugees. The asylum process is extremely bureaucratic, and legal staffers with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Tapachula report frequent rule changes and haphazard application of regulations, challenging even Spanish-speakers.

Gouin Lafrance, who left Haiti for Argentina in 2018, relies on his 12-year-old son to help him navigate life in Mexico. Emmanuel learned Spanish while the family lived in South America. He isn’t in school because his father needs him to translate and watch his 3-year-old brother, Jefferson.

Lafrance and his sons arrived in Mexico early this year after making the same journey as Jean through the lawless Darién Gap, a treacherous 60 miles where dozens of travelers die or go missing each year, often victims of criminal gangs.

Lafrance said he risked the deadly jungle trek that separates Colombia and Panama after suffering years of miserable economic opportunity and xenophobia in South America, which many Haitians say they face because they are poor and Black.

Emmanuel was able to keep up with other travelers in his group, while his father moved slowly with little Jefferson. They went six days without eating, and Jefferson became ill.

“I didn’t know if he would survive,” said Lafrance, who has to wait until August for an interview with COMAR to determine his asylum status.

Haitians are the third-largest group applying for asylum in Mexico this year, after Hondurans and Cubans. Ramírez estimates that COMAR could receive around 14,000 Haitian applications in 2022 — well below last year’s figure, and a level that the agency is comfortable meeting with Creole-speaking staffers.

Migrants and asylum-seekers like Jean and Lafrance also face confusion and misinformation about what legal documents COMAR provides compared with Mexico’s National Institute of Migration, which is responsible for issuing humanitarian visas to those meeting particular criteria.

In 2020, COMAR offices were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and communication was moved online and to phone interviews. Asylum services, claims, and translations have never completely recovered, according to legal advisers at JRS. Asylum-seekers report monthslong wait times to get an appointment, with most taking place over the phone.

“A lot of cases were denied because of a bad interview,” Perez Martinez said. “Many people were very nervous because they didn’t know when [COMAR] was going to call.”

According to a report from the Washington Office on Latin America, Haitians saw the lowest rate of asylum approvals in 2021 of any nationality in Mexico, at 23% — much lower than the 85% of Salvadorans and Hondurans who received the protections.

Migrants and refugees must also contend with widespread corruption and fraud. Some Mexican officials charge exorbitant under-the-table fees for paperwork or asylum appointments, and Haitians are particularly susceptible.

“A lot of people are trying to make money [off] of them,” Ramírez said.

“We have to [make] a greater effort in informing them better with more clarity, to be more insistent, to be more reiterative” so they can’t be misled, he added. “I think there’s room for improvement.”