Immigration Contention on the Northern Border of Mexico: The Detentions and Deportations of Central Americans during the PANDEMIC.

Abstract

Irregularized Central Americans in transit through Mexico and bound for the United States of America (USA) are populations that experience migratory containment by the US and Mexican governments. During the Sars-Cov2 pandemic (2020-2021) and in the context of the northern Mexican border, this article, by consulting official sources and reports from pro-migrant organizations, argues that there were spatial and sociodemographic changes in the detention processes and deportation of Central American migrants. It is argued that, beyond being just exercises of Mexican immigration law on foreign populations, detentions and deportations are part of national and regional migration containment strategies, within the framework of the US anti-immigrant agenda. The contribution of the work is to show that the northern border, as a territory of concentration of detentions and deportations, serves as a national and regional space for the disarticulation of Central American migrations.