The video that shows some agents in Mexico who kick a migrant in the face

The National Institute of Migration (INM) of Mexico suspended two of its agents for what it said was their “wrongdoing” in an operation in which migrants were attacked on the country’s southern border on Saturday.

The suspensions, which were formally notified on Sunday, come after a video was released on social networks that shows INM agents hitting and kicking a migrant in the head to avoid passing through Tapachula, in the southern state of Chiapas.

The man was part of a caravan of migrants, mostly Central Americans, trying to move through Mexico to the United States.

According to the videos released, the events occurred when one of the migrants who was part of the group that was advancing on the road from Tapachula to Arriaga confronts an INM officer.

Later, two other agents try to help their partner and end up hitting the migrant, throwing him to the ground and kicking him in the face.

And meanwhile, National Guard agents are observed surrounding the scene with their shields to prevent the intervention of other migrants.

After the agents were suspended, the INM indicated that it will not tolerate “any conduct outside or different” to its protocols and policies for “the safeguarding and respect of the human rights of people in the context of mobility”.

For their part, human rights organizations such as the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico and Amnesty International Mexico condemned the events and asked the Mexican government to act “with a humanitarian approach” in the face of the arrival of migrants.

According to local media reports this Monday, there was another operation of the INM and the GN to try to dismantle the caravan of migrants, made up of several hundred people, that left Tapachula on Saturday.

According to the newspaper The universal, after the migrants managed to advance about 100 kilometers from Tapachula, INM and GN agents managed to arrest about 100 people, mostly women with children, but most of them evaded the operation.

Migration has increased dramatically in Mexico since 2018, when caravans of migrants, mainly Central Americans, began to enter the country to reach the United States.

According to local media, in Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, they are concentrated more than 125,000 migrants, many of them sleeping on the streets, waiting for their asylum applications to be processed.

Likewise, in the state of Chiapas some 15,000 elements of the Army, Navy and National Guard are deployed to stop migratory flows from Central America.