Critics of latest immigration reform worry legal guidelines might criminalise non secular teams and volunteers who work with migrants and asylum seekers.
Colonia Mezquital, Guatemala – It had taken hours to cross the border from Honduras to Guatemala by bus, and Edwin Gomez, a 39-year-old migrant from Honduras’s capital, wanted a spot to relaxation for the evening.
That’s how he discovered himself with Friar German Tax, strolling slowly via Colonia Mezquital, a neighborhood 15 km (9.3 miles) south of Guatemala Metropolis. Their vacation spot was a two-storey home, nestled alongside a slender road.
“I used to be advised that there was a church the place I might come and keep,” Gomez advised Al Jazeera.
However shelters just like the one the place Gomez was headed are dealing with new threats in Guatemala. As migrants and asylum seekers journey north via Central America, with many headed to the United States, Guatemala has instituted reforms that would criminalise the work executed by faith-based teams and volunteers to shelter and take care of them.
In January, the federal government started implementing new laws that may require non-governmental migrant shelters to submit biometric info and different information for migrants who use their services every day. That information consists of identification particulars, fingerprints, biographical materials and different private info.
Leaders from the Episcopal Convention of Guatemala, a department of the Catholic Church, have raised issues in regards to the new laws. Tax, the friar working in Colonia Mezquital, expressed outrage on the prospect of implementing the brand new coverage.
“That’s not attainable,” Tax exclaimed, sitting in a chair within the entryway of the shelter. “If we did that, we might be shedding the belief that migrants have in us as a result of right here migrants come and converse and inform their tales.”
But when shelters like Tax’s fail to conform, authorities might use components of the reforms made to Guatemala’s immigration legislation in February 2022 to pursue felony fees in opposition to shelter personnel.
The reforms goal human smugglers recognized domestically as “coyotes”, extending the utmost jail sentence for unlawful trafficking to 30 years. However attributable to ambiguity within the legislation’s language, the reforms may be used to punish individuals who help and help migrants and asylum seekers.
Beneath the brand new reforms, the label “trafficker” could possibly be utilized to anybody who facilitates a migrant’s keep and transit in Guatemala.
“We aren't forcing them emigrate,” mentioned Tax. “What we do is not any extra like receiving the brother or sister to allow them to relaxation, sleep an evening in a mattress, eat about two meals and proceed on their method.”
The Catholic Church operates 9 migrant shelters throughout Guatemala, which serve hundreds every month, together with the two-storey home in Colonia Mezquital.
The Franciscan order is accountable for that exact shelter, which is positioned close to a bus station the place individuals can discover transportation alongside Guatemala’s southern coast towards Mexico. The shelter opened in 2019 and has capability for as much as 40 guests. Migrants and asylum seekers can keep for as much as three days earlier than they transfer on to the subsequent cease of their journey north.
However throughout a January 27 press convention in Guatemala Metropolis, the bishops of Guatemala’s Episcopal Convention warned they might shut all 9 shelters totally, moderately than be compelled to submit information on the migrants and asylum seekers who use their humanitarian companies.
The brand new laws are “an extreme management”, Cardinal Alvaro Ramazzini, bishop for the division of Huehuetenango, advised Al Jazeera following the press convention. “The concept [is] that those that come to the Casa del Migrante come to ask for relaxation.”
However the heightened measures come as Guatemala more and more cracks down on the migrants and asylum seekers who move via the Central American nation. In January, greater than 200 migrants, primarily from Ecuador, India, Haiti and Venezuela, had been deported by immigration officers, in accordance with the Guatemalan Migration Institute, a authorities company.
Guatemala has additionally applied new visa necessities for residents of the Dominican Republic after it noticed a rise in individuals arriving from the Caribbean nation.
Stricter immigration measures have been a development throughout Central America, because the administration of US President Joe Biden places strain on the area to stem the circulate of migrants and asylum seekers travelling north to its southern border with Mexico.
“It's an goal of the USA that the containment [of migrants] begins from nations” like Guatemala, mentioned Ursula Roldan, an immigration skilled at Guatemala’s Rafael Landivar College.
“These insurance policies solely have an effect on migrants and put them in danger,” she mentioned.
And the route north is already harmful, as migrants and asylum seekers face threats and extortion, even from police demanding bribes.
As Guatemala continues to implement measures to discourage migrants and asylum seekers, the Episcopal Convention has sought dialogue with the federal government of President Alejandro Giammattei to advocate in opposition to among the reforms.
In response to Cardinal Ramazzini, a delegation from the Pastoral of Human Mobility — a Catholic group — will probably be assembly with Guatemala’s Vice President Guillermo Castillo and the Nationwide Immigration Authority within the coming weeks.
The Guatemalan Migration Institute advised Al Jazeera it was unable to touch upon the problems raised by the brand new immigration reforms till the assembly had taken place.
In response to congressional consultant Ligia Hernandez of the centrist Semilla social gathering, her workplace can even be holding a listening to alongside church authorities to make clear how the reforms will probably be applied so they don't have an effect on the shelters.
“Migrant shelters exist to not promote migration however to take care of individuals who haven't been cared for of their nations,” Hernández advised Al Jazeera. She promised to “make it clear” that the federal government is “not going to criminalise the actions which are carried out throughout the shelters”.
On the coronary heart of the issues is the worry that the brand new immigration necessities will worsen an already worrying humanitarian disaster within the area. However shelter staff like Friar Tax are decided to proceed serving the migrants and asylum seekers who move via his doorways.
“Our accountability and our job,” he mentioned, is “to handle individuals to the extent that we will. We're going to proceed working, serving the individuals to the most effective of our means”.
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