Mexico town split over Central American drifters

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Migrants fall prey to kidnappers and worse while the Mexican government does little to protect them, rights groups say. But others say the migrants are forming criminal bands and should be deported.

Reporting from Tultitlan, Mexico - Gathered below an overpass on Independence Avenue, dressed in the multiple layers typical of homeless travelers, the migrants watched for the next northbound freight train through Tultitlan.

Many of them, mostly young men and boys, prepared to hop aboard, hobo-style, on an ever-more-precarious trip that might get them as far as the United States.

But fewer migrants are achieving that goal. Central Americans who for years have passed through Mexico en route to the U.S. are increasingly cutting their trips short as they run out of cash or become discouraged by fewer opportunities farther away from home.

The lingering presence of the migrants in this town, about an hour's drive outside Mexico City, is tearing the small community apart, with some residents providing migrants with food, clothes and aid and others complaining of their alleged crimes, plus a new local government maneuvering to get rid of them.

The treatment of immigrants has become a divisive and embarrassing issue for Mexico. A country that has historically sent millions of its own people to the U.S. and elsewhere in search of work, Mexico has proved itself less than hospitable to Central Americans following the same calling.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/latinamerica/la-fg-mexico-migrants15-2009oct15,0,2332695.story