美国国家公共电台 NPR Mexican Official Tries To Move Asylum-Seekers Stuck In Tent Camps（在线收听）

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Thousands of asylum-seekers are stuck in Mexican border towns up and down the U.S.-Mexico border. And in Matamoros, Mexico, more than 1,500 asylum-seekers are living in squalid conditions in a tent encampment. Mexican officials want them to move. Some migrants say child welfare officials have threatened to take custody of their children, separating them from their families. Texas Public Radio's Reynaldo Leanos Jr. reports from Matamoros.

REYNALDO LEANOS JR, BYLINE: A Mexican child welfare official holding a clipboard addressed a crowd of asylum-seekers last week. They're in a sprawling tent encampment near the international bridge that connects Matamoros to Brownsville, Texas.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).

LEANOS: In this video taken by a migrant, the official tells them the encampment is no place for children and that he has the authority to take custody of their kids if they don't move. The parents object.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Through interpreter) How would you like it if we took a child by force from your home?

LEANOS: The child welfare agency in Matamoros did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with NPR. In written statements to the media, the agency says not a single child was taken. The agency says the social workers who went to the encampment just wanted to offer the families space at a new shelter.

Erin Thorn Vela is with the Texas Civil Rights Project. She hopes Mexican officials do keep families together.

ERIN THORN VELA: I was really surprised that this tactic would be taken of, like, essentially a new type of family separation on the Mexican side.

LEANOS: She points out that the Trump administration got a lot of blowback over its family separation policy aimed at discouraging migrant families from illegally crossing into the U.S.

VELA: I would think that they would see how this is really not a good idea and it's not going to end in a good result to threaten people.

LEANOS: Many migrants have been forced to wait in Mexico, sometimes for months, for their hearings in U.S. immigration court under the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy. Migrants say they prefer to live in the encampment where they feel protected by American aid groups and have access to legal help. And they have been largely ignored by the U.S. and Mexican governments. That is, until last Friday, when Mexican officials decided they wanted to clear the encampments and move the migrants. Some of them are living in tents. Others sleep under bushes or on the streets. Many bathe in the Rio Grande.

Matamoros' Mayor Mario Lopez says he's concerned about public health and the migrants' well-being.

MARIO LOPEZ: (Through interpreter) I want to convey confidence that we're treating them well and that we have our doors open to migrants and help them so they can get to their destination, which is the United States.

LEANOS: Lopez says the government would not forcibly move asylum-seekers to the shelter. Still, panic has been spreading. Migrants say some of the child welfare officials went tent to tent looking for children. One Honduran mother said she refused to let them take her son.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Through interpreter) I told them I couldn't, that I wouldn't let my kid go. And they told me I didn't know the laws here in Mexico.

LEANOS: She says an official handed her a notice to appear at a child welfare office, but she had no intentions of going. She asked that we not use her name because she fears retribution. Like most migrants camped out at the bridge, she says she has no plans of going to the shelter, a converted gymnasium that can house 300.

I was able to go inside the shelter, which is only about a third full. I spoke to another Honduran mother who says she was happy to come here with her son.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).

LEANOS: She says they get three meals a day. There are restrooms, and they sleep in a bed.

Back at the encampment, advocates, including Amnesty International, say they're monitoring the situation to make sure the human rights of migrants are respected.

For NPR News, I'm Reynaldo Leanos Jr. in Matamoros, Mexico.