Honduran Migrants Call For Better Protections In Speech Before Mexican Senators

A group of fifteen Honduran migrants who lost limbs during attempts to hitchhike atop cargo trains through Mexico to the United States arrived in Mexico City on Wednesday. The migrants are seeking an audience with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, whom they want to establish a system of humanitarian visas to be conceded to Central Americans and others passing through Mexico on their way to the US. Migrants face a host of dangers in Mexico, from drug cartels and sometimes from authorities themselves -- a January study by a shelter in Saltillo found that 47 percent of those extorted on their trip said it came at the hands of police.

Animal Politico reports that the group of fifteen were received at the Mexican Senate on Wednesday, where they spoke before a crowd which included US ambassador Anthony Wayne, several Mexican senators, president of the national human rights commission, and priest Alejandro Solalinde, who runs the shelter Hermanos en el Camino. The group called for policies to protect them from cartel members who demand money from migrants in exchange for the right to passage.

José Luis Hernández, one of the migrants who is also president of the Association of Disabled Returning Migrants in Honduras, told the Associated Press that in his country, there are 452 migrants who were left maimed by injuries suffered on their way to the US, and that there were more from other Central American countries. "We have hit bottom," Hernandez said. "It is no longer even news when two people die on "La Bestia," or that somebody fell under the train and lost his legs.”