UN Refugee Agency Closes Four Offices In Mexico Due To Funding Crisis

Illustration of the United States - Mexico (Wikimedia Commons/US Customs and Border Protection) border

JAKARTA - The UN refugee agency in Mexico closed four offices in the country and laid off 190 people for "serious funding crisis" facing the agency, the UNHCR head in Mexico said on Tuesday, after US President Donald Trump cut foreign aid.

"UNHCR had to make a very serious decision this year," Giovanni Lepri, a UNHCR representative in Mexico, said the agency's operations in Mexico had lost about 60 percent of its budget.

Last year, Mexico was among the top 10 countries with the highest number of asylum applications in the world, with nearly 80,000 applications registered by the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission (COMAR), UNHCR said.

The majority of applicants come from Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela.

The closure of the offices, including two offices in the cities of Palenque and Tenosique in southern Mexico, and the third office in Guadalajara, western Mexico, has raised concerns among migrant activists.

"This will have a huge impact on the migrant community," said Jose Maria Garcia, director of the 2000 Juventud shelter in MAYOR, northern Mexico.

UNHCR operations in Mexico rely heavily on US funding, which has been affected by Trump's global funding freeze.

On January 20, hours after taking office, Trump ordered a temporary suspension of foreign aid to review whether the aid was in line with its foreign policy priorities.

President Trump also imposed a crackdown on the US-Mexico border, which aims to slow migration to the United States.

The UNHCR cut also resulted in a migrant shelter managed by the United Nations agency-dependent Catholic Church for funding, Julio Lopez, director of the Mexican Scalabrini Foundation, said.

"The budget for shelters has been reduced and as a result, programs and projects have decreased," he said.

Nevertheless, he added: "residential places continue to operate and support migrants."