Honduras It is the Latin American country that leads the number of migrants who requested recognition of refugee status, totaling 172,596 peopleaccording to figures from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar).
According to the institution dependent on the Ministry of the Interior (Segob), after Honduras follows Haiti with 128,328 requests of asylum, Cuba with 68 thousand 188 applicationsfollowed by Venezuela with 39 thousand 230 applications and El Salvador with a total of 36 thousand 436.
“During the current Administration, from 2019 to the end of June 2024, the top 5 nationalities requesting refugee status in Mexico are Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and El Salvador,” said the head of Comar, Andrés Ramírez Silva, through a message posted on social media.
In the current government administration, which is headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it began on December 1, 2018 and will end on September 30 of this year, but due to administrative effects The counting of migrants begins precisely in 2019.
Migrant applications to decline in 2024
Meanwhile, the analysis of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance mentions that During the first half of 2024, a total of 41,427 asylum applications have been submitted by migrants.
Bliss Figure represents a decrease of 45.5 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, when 76,130 asylum requests were registered. While in the first half of 2022, a total of 58,660 cases of migrants seeking asylum in Mexico were recorded.
In total figures per year, Comar reported 140,831 requests in 2023; 119,083 in 2022; 129,329 cases of migrants registered in 2021; in the three previous years it reached 40,733 in 2020, 70,120 in 2019 and only 19,410 requests in 2018.
According to data recorded by the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), around 324 thousand citizens from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador arrived at the southern border of the United States in 2023, a figure that represents a 29 percent reduction compared to 2021.
The problem of migration in Mexico worsened in October 2018, when caravans began to arrive with thousands of migrants, mostly Central Americans, who were trying to reach the United States in search of a job opportunity.
Besides, The arrival of migrants has remained active in recent years despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions imposed by countries in the Latin American region.