TAPACHULA, Mexico — When migrants arrive to the main crossing point into southern Mexico — a steamy city with no job opportunities, a place packed with foreigners eager to keep moving north — they soon learn the only way to cut through the red tape and expedite what can be a monthslong process is to pay someone.
With soaring numbers of people entering Mexico, a sprawling network of lawyers, fixers and middlemen has exploded in the country. Opportunists are ready to provide documents to migrants who can afford to speed up the system — and who don’t want to risk their lives packed in a truck for a dangerous border crossing.
In nearly two dozen interviews with The Associated Press, migrants, officials and those in the business described a network operating at the limit of legality, cooperating with — and sometimes bribing — bureaucrats in Mexico’s immigration sector, where corruption is deeply ingrained, and at times working directly with smugglers.
The result is a booming business that often preys on a population of migrants who are largely poor and desperate.
Freedom from detention, permits, visas: All are available for a price via the network. Although the documents are legal and the cost can be several hundred dollars or more, migrants are at risk of arrest or return to entry points, thanks to inconsistent enforcement and corruption at checkpoints.
Crossing through Mexico has long been a risk. Free government channels that can mitigate danger are available, but the record number of migrant arrivals has wreaked havoc on the system.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, U.S. authorities apprehended people crossing the southwest border 2.38 million times. That’s up 37 percent from the year prior.
In response, the Mexican government loosened criteria for some temporary and transit permits, especially for migrants from countries where it would be difficult for Mexico to return them.
Now, it takes months just to get an appointment to begin the process. Amid waits and tension, it’s tempting to pay fixers and lawyers.
In the south, migrants can choose from different packages — transit permits, temporary visas — promoted on social media and adapted to various scenarios and budgets. Farther north, options are scarce; paying specific operators may be the only way out of a detention center.
Migrants rarely report questionable practices. Most assume payments and time are part of the price of getting to the U.S. Authorities seldom take action, citing lack of evidence.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has declared the National Immigration Institute one of Mexico’s most corrupt institutions. Yet in the past four years, only about one in every 1,000 internal investigations opened by the agency has made it to the prosecutor’s office, data show.
The National Immigration Institute didn’t reply to requests for comment about efforts to combat corruption. Officials there refused to be interviewed. This month, the agency said it had followed up on every recommendation issued by the internal control office.
Lack of accountability has made it easy for fixers to operate and exchange payments and information with officials.
The Federal Institute of Public Defenders has denounced arrangements between immigration agents and private lawyers. In response, some of its officials have been harassed and intimidated, according to the agency.
For one Dominican man, getting papers took three days and $1,700 to get a permit to travel through Mexico, he told AP. He said a lawyer brought the government-issued transit document to a house where a smuggler took him after he crossed into Mexico.
