The railway company Ferromex, the largest in Mexico, announced on Tuesday the suspension of the operations of its freight trains due to the massive accumulation of migrants who board the freight cars to move on their way to the United States, which has left several injured.
Ferromex, which is part of the Grupo México corporation, said in a statement that it temporarily paralyzed the operations of 60 trains that covered the routes to northern Mexico, given the “severe risk” that the use of freight trains represents for migrants. To transport.
In its statement, the company acknowledges that in recent days, they have registered about half a dozen injuries or deaths among the groups of people who boarded cargo trains on their route to the northern border “despite the serious danger that this implies.”.
According to the company’s report, more than 1,500 people are concentrated in the operations yards of the city of Torreón, state of Coahuila; in the town of Irapuato, Guanajuato state, there are more than 800; in San Francisco de los Romo, state of Aguascalientes, around 1,000, and on the route between Chihuahua and Ciudad Juárez, another 1,000 in the cargo gondolas.
Migrants have long used railroads from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. About a decade ago, the Mexican government carried out some raids on trains to discourage the practice but later reduced controls.
Ferromex indicated that lifting the strike would depend on the authorities’ actions at different levels.
The government has so far not offered comments on Ferromex’s decision.
Impact of the measure
The railway company indicated that it has already informed its customers about the temporary impact on services that will affect production chains, supply, and international trade.
Although the strike is expected to be temporary, Ana Bertha Gutiérrez, foreign trade and labor market coordinator at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness told The Associated Press that the suspension will have a “very important” impact on the Mexican economy.
In particular, the impact will be felt, she said, in the northern states of Nuevo León, Baja California, and Chihuahua, which are within manufacturing industry chains and maintain strong export activity to the U.S. market.
Nearly half of the imports that Mexico received in the first four months of this year were moved by road, while 36.84% were driven by sea, 8.84% by air transport, and 6.58% by rail, according to official figures.
Regarding exports, between last January and April, 67.22% of external sales moved by land, 17.28% by sea, and 10.95% by rail transport.
Despair to reach the Southern United States
The announcement comes as migrants are increasingly desperate to reach the U.S. southern border.
On Monday, migrants, mostly from Haiti, broke into the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) office in the border city of Tapachula to press for the start of asylum procedures.
Andrés Ramírez Silva, director of COMAR, recently said that Mexico’s southern border is experiencing a drastic increase in asylum seekers, so this year they could reach 150,000, well above the record of 129,000 in 2021.
