Gribil Mejia Tinoco, from Santa Barbara, Honduras, center, with his wife Heidi and children, leaves a shelter where they stayed for one month before getting temporary permission to stay in Mexico, in Mapastepec, Chiapas state, Mexico, Sunday, April 28, 2019. This week, Central American migrants who traveled in caravans to the U.S. have begun receiving a Mexican government ID that allows them to stay for five years on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, prompting them to leave the shelters. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo) (Photo: Moises Castillo, AP)
The humanitarian visas granted to migrants to live and work throughout Mexico have been cut off. The Mexican government has ordered bus operators to stop ferrying migrants across the country. Local police forces in several southern Mexican states have blocked migrants from entering town centers.
Even local citizens have stopped offering plates of food, water and bundles of used clothing, forcing migrants to scrounge for food, often picking mangoes that thrive in the tropical heat.
Mexico experts say the hastily-arranged response is the result of López Obrador trying to establish his new government while juggling two competing forces: His campaign promise to regularize migration through his country in a compassionate way and the constant threats from President Donald Trump to seal the border and sanction Mexico.
"The Mexican government is between a rock and a hard place here," said Rachel Schmidtke, a program analyst for the Mexico Institute at the Washington-based, non-partisan Wilson Center. "It’s a very delicate balance that they're striking where they’re trying to do more a pragmatic immigration management strategy, but at the same time not wanting to have conflicts with their neighbor to the north."