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Within Sight of the US Border, Pope Francis Denounces the ‘Human Tragedy’ of Migration

The Pope’s passionate appeal on behalf of migrants rounded off his six-day visit to Mexico and highlighted the plight of Central American migrants fleeing extreme violence and poverty.
Photo by Alessandro Di Meo/EPA

Pope Francis rounded off his six-day visit to Mexico with a passionate appeal to governments to listen to the human suffering behind migration statistics — and he made it just 80 yards from the US border.

"The human tragedy of forced migration is a global phenomenon," the pope said during a mass held in a fairground in Ciudad Juárez, and connected via video link to a university stadium over the frontier in El Paso in Texas. "It is a crisis that can be measured in numbers but should be measured with names, stories, and families."

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The pope highlighted the current wave of Central Americans fleeing extreme gangland violence and poverty, particularly in Honduras and El Salvador.

"We cannot deny the humanitarian crisis of recent years with thousands of people traveling by train, road, and foot. They travel hundreds of kilometers over mountains, deserts and inhospitable pathways," he said, describing the journey many make through Mexico. "They are our brothers and sisters who have been expelled by poverty and violence, by drug trafficking and organized crime… pursued and threatened when they try to escape the spiral of violence"

The rising number of Central Americans traveling through Mexico to the US was largely ignored for years.

Related: Wave of Unaccompanied Central American Migrant Kids Overwhelms US Holding Facilities

This changed when the media began paying attention to a particular hike of unaccompanied minors and family units reaching the US border in 2014. The numbers dropped sharply last year, thanks to a crackdown in southern Mexico. Now they are rising again.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency reported that 20,164 unaccompanied minors and 23,702 members of families reached the border between the start of the fiscal year in October and the end of January. This was an increase of 102 percent and 171 percent respectively from the same period the previous year.

"There is always time to change," the pope said, apparently directing his comments to the policy makers who want to keep such migrants out. "A way out can always be found, there is always an opportunity."

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Francis also mentioned the difficulties faced by Mexicans living in the United States.

Related: Pope Francis Tells Mexican Priests Not to Resign Themselves to the Drug Wars

Mexican migration has fallen steadily in recent years. For the first time since records began, fewer Mexicans left the country in 2012 than returned home. The decline is widely understood as the result of much tighter border controls that have made the crossing more difficult, dangerous, and expensive, as well as several years of economic sluggishness in the US.

The day before the pope's arrival a group calling itself We Belong Together crossed over the border into Ciudad Juárez from El Paso in a protest they hoped would highlight immigration issues on both sides of the border.

One of those marching was Samantha Herrera who was born in Texas. As a child she travelled to Minnesota and Michigan each summer to pick apples, cherries, and asparagus with her parents.

Now she constantly worries that they will be deported.

"There is a climate of terror," she said of her home town. "People are afraid to leave their house. They only drive to work, that's it. People are afraid at any moment they could be arrested and deported."

Related: The Pope Blames Business for Crime in Mexico — And Asks Prisoners to Forgive Society

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency reported that over 235,000 immigrants where deported in the 2015 fiscal year. This was less than during any other year of the administration of President Barack Obama who had presided over a sharp hike in deportations before that. They reached a peak of 409,000 in 2012.

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The activists were also looking for a message from Pope Francis in the context of the harsh anti-migrant comments made in the election race.

"We are seeing a panorama of hostility by some of the candidates, but specifically, Donald Trump," said Blanca Rivera, director of the Immigrant House of Juarez, and one of the organizers of the march. "But we believe that the majority of the United States is a noble country, and that they are not going to accept this message of discrimination and hostility against people. The United States is a country of immigrants historically."

Last week Trump accused Mexico of sending the pope to the border in order to lobby against his proposals to build a wall along its entire length, paid for by Mexico.

"Mexico got him to do it because Mexico wants to keep the border just the way it is because they're making a fortune and we're losing," Trump told Fox Business Network. "I think that he doesn't understand the problems our country has. I don't think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico."

Related: Hey, Donald Trump, More Mexicans Are Leaving the US Than Entering

Back at the mass, Pat Turner said he and his wife had come to Júarez from the town of Lubbock in Texas because "you gotta see the pope."

"We need a strong border," he said after the border mass was over and the pope had left. "We can't just let everyone in all the time, but if someone is running for their life, we should let them in."

Follow Nathaniel Janowitz on: @ngjanowitz