MEXICO CITY (CN) — With a new immigration agenda on the list of possible outcomes at this week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the head of a group of 14,000 migrants walking the highway in southern Mexico had a message for attendees.
He implored President Joe Biden and other leaders to put migrants' needs over politics when discussing the highly contentious issue.
“We’re asking heads of state to come to an agreement on immigration. The lives of those forced into migration are above political, economic and ideological interests,” said Luis García Villagrán, caravan organizer and director of the nonprofit Center for Human Dignification, in a phone interview.
“Migration should be paramount at the Summit of the Americas because although issues like economy and the pandemic are of great importance, migration is above them,” he said.
On the road with García were 3,000 children, at least 126 pregnant women and over 70 people with physical disabilities. While the group includes migrants from Central America, Haiti and Cuba, the vast majority of them were from Venezuela, García said. They left Tapachula, Chiapas, on Monday with their sights set on the U.S.-Mexico border.
These vulnerable individuals, García said, are why summit attendees should put migrants first in their plans for an immigration agenda.
“No matter their political affiliations, government leaders should understand that the people walking are suffering,” he said. "Migrants are not political currency."
A workshop during the summit’s Civil Society Forum brought together various nongovernmental players together Tuesday to discuss migrant integration. Speakers included Angélica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights, who detailed that organization's efforts to integrate migrants into U.S. society via civic engagement and labor organization.
"Integration happens by promoting citizenship and working to hold a democracy in which new citizens register to vote and are encouraged to vote on Election Day," she said.
Representatives from the faith-based organization Latter-day Saint Charities and the youth empowerment NGO JA Americas also attended the forum.
Cynthia Juárez Lange, senior counsel at Fragomen and a representative of Latter-day Saint Charities, said migrants need to be provided with information and treated with dignity when they arrive in their host country.
“The number of people fleeing violence, crime, natural disasters, food insecurity and poverty and crossing the border in the Americas is reaching record highs," Juárez Lange said. "It includes a record number of children that cross the borders unaccompanied, all alone."
She said faith-based organizations are often on the front lines of migration assistance.
"They will often have been part of the assistance during the journey before they reach their host country," Juárez Lange said.
The Biden administration has made little effort to include civil society groups from outside the United States in talks later this week, according to Refugees International’s deputy director for the Americas and Europe Yael Schacher.
She told Courthouse News that while the subject of immigration may seem important enough to be a central issue at the summit, it is not one of the main pillars of the event.
These pillars include trade, health, digital transformation and economic inclusion, among others. The signing of a new immigration agenda is a Biden administration initiative.
“This is presumably a forum where this should be in the summit officially and also should incorporate the voices of the migrants who are walking and the organizations that they lead,” Schacher said. Without their input, she said, the declaration resulting from these talks will likely be rhetorical.
“The question is what actual policies might be announced,” she said. “What will it matter if countries sign onto a declaration if the policies don’t change?"
The White House did not respond to Courthouse News' request for comment.
Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego, had little hope the summit would yield tangible results. He said it was not well organized, as the U.S. State Department has had its hands full with issues like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I don’t expect much from this Summit of the Americas. It’ll produce very few concrete results, if any,” he said in a phone interview.
One other key voice in the immigration discussion is also missing from the summit: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. After threatening for weeks to skip the event if the U.S. didn't invite the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, he confirmed Monday that he would send Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard in his place.
“I’m not going to the summit because they didn’t invite all the American countries, and I believe in the need to change the policy that has been imposed for centuries: exclusion, the desire to dominate without reason, [and] not respecting the sovereignty and independence of each country,” he said in his morning press conference on Monday.
García said the migrants traveling from Chiapas requested transit visas from Mexico’s National Migration Institute in order to make their way to the northern border with legal documentation but received no visas. The institute did not respond to Courthouse News’ request for comment.
Still, a lack of papers won’t stop them.
“With or without transit permits, on or off buses, no matter what the authorities do, we’re going to the border,” he said.
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