Bringing order to Mexico's southern border will take around 18 years: Mayans

Mexico faces a serious national security problem because its southern border adjoins the most violent countries in the world without being at war: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, said Humberto Mayans Canabal, former head of the Southern Border Coordination for Comprehensive Attention of Migrants, an agency that cost the country 102 million pesos (US$6.2 million) and was closed last week.

The former "immigration czar" said that the southern border was abandoned for decades and that its underdevelopment causes poverty, violence and lawlessness.

He added that bringing order to the region will take around three administrations (18 years) in order to give continuity to the actions of modernization carried out by the current administration aimed at preventing the country from being divided into two: a prosperous and developed north and a poor and marginalized south.

Mayans explained that the government has allotted 1.23 billion pesos (US$75.3 million) to the region with 187 projects, such as modernizing the southeast railway system.

In an interview with EL UNIVERSAL, Mayans said that of the 27 million foreigners that entered the country in 2014, 12.9 million did so through the southern border. He added that between 250,000 and 300,000 people enter Mexico illegally every year and that last year 119,714 Central Americans were arrested by the National Immigration Institute and repatriated to their countries.

Mayans said that 23,096 children, 7,113 of them unaccompanied, were arrested in 2014, compared to 12,794 from January to May this year, 7,994 of them unaccompanied.