Migrants in southern Mexico are protesting over the treatment they're receiving from government officials, saying authorities are holding them in squalid conditions.
The migrants who are protesting are African or Afro-descendant, mostly from Central Africa and Haiti. Several hundred of them have been living in a tent city near the Guatemala border for more than six weeks.
On Wednesday, a group of them set tires on fire and wrote on the walls of the Century XXI migrant holding facility in the city of Tapachula.
Sister Magdalena Silva, who oversees a national network of shelters for migrants, including one in Tapachula, said Mexican authorities are containing them so they won't make it to the U-S border.
“It is a truly dehumanizing situation,” Silva said. “They have a right to migrate.”
Mexican immigration officials say they're opening a second office near the Guatemala border so they can better serve migrants.
