TULTITLAN, mexico — Deported from the United States after years of working construction in New Jersey, Hector Augusto Lopez decided to rebuild his life in his hometown in eastern Honduras.
He found a steady job in a shoe store in Catacamas. Then, in March, he watched horrified as robbers shot three customers to death. Soon after, he decided to make the hard and dangerous journey north again.
“In Honduras there is a lot of violence, a lot of robberies and a lot of poverty,” Lopez, 28, said as he waited to jump a cargo train just outside Mexico City on a recent afternoon. “There is no future there.”
Half a block away, dozens more U.S.-bound Central American migrants waited outside an overflowing one-story, crammed shelter, napping on pieces of cardboard, wrapping themselves in garbage bags against the cold and trading stories about their journeys north.
While the number of Mexicans heading to the U.S. has dropped dramatically, a surge of Central American migrants is making the 1,000-mile northbound journey this year, fueled in large part by the rising violence brought by the spread of Mexican drug cartels.
Other factors, experts say, are an easing in migration enforcement by Mexican authorities and a false perception that Mexican criminal gangs are not preying on migrants as much as they had been.
Central American migration remains small compared with the numbers of Mexicans still headed north, but their steeply rising numbers speak to the violence and poverty at home. The perils of the journey have pushed smuggling fees as high as $7,000, as much as double the earlier rates, for a trip that takes weeks, or even months for those delayed by robberies, health problems or difficulties finding transportation.
Honduras, with a population of 7 million, had the world’s highest homicide rate in 2010, with 6,200 killings, or 82.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. That’s up from 57 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2008. Neighboring El Salvador had 66 homicides per 100,000 in 2010. The U.S., by comparison, saw about five homicides per 100,000 people.
“The reality is that a lot of Mexicans have sort of given up looking for work in the U.S. and have started to return home, but for Central Americans, the conditions may be even more desperate that the ones we’re seeing in Mexico,” said David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.
About 56,637 non-Mexican migrants, most of them Central Americans, were detained by the U.S. Border Patrol along the border with Mexico between October and May. That’s more than double the 27,561 detained in the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, the number of Mexican migrants caught at the U.S. southern border decreased 7 percent this fiscal year, to 188,467.
42%
Increase over the same period a year earlier of illegal immigrants from Central America captured by Mexican authorities between January and April
7%
Decrease in Mexican migrants caught at the U.S. border last fiscal year
