Handicapped Honduran Migrants Going Home After Denied Meeting With Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto

La Jornada reported on Wednesday evening that a group of 15 handicapped Honduran migrants who had traveled to the Mexican capital in hopes of speaking with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto left on Wednesday for Honduras after finding their request for an audience denied. The men, who are members of the Honduran Association of Returned Handicapped Migrants (AMIREDIS), expressed disappointment with the rejection. “Life is really unfair for us,” said José Luis Hernández, the group’s president. “We deserve more. We achieved little or nothing but at least we were able to get a foot in the door.”

The migrants, who were handicapped by injuries sustained during what is often an extraordinarily perilous journey through Mexico to the United States -- in many cases, those injuries came while hitchhiking atop a series of cargo trains known collectively as "La Bestia" -- had been living in the city of Tapachula, near Mexico’s southern border, as they waited for Mexico’s immigration agency to respond to their request for a humanitarian visa. As weeks passed without a response, they gave up waiting. On April 10, the group were received at the Mexican senate, where they spoke before a crowd that included a handful of senators and human rights defenders.

Hernández told the BBC that the group had been granted no more than a visa to secure safe passage on their way home. That fell far short of their plan to urge Peña Nieto to take immediate action to protect the thousands of migrants -- most of them Central American -- who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States. Among their requests was the establishment of a regional migrant-security plan, to be worked out by Central American and Mexican governments, which would guarantee free transit through Mexican territory.