TAPACHULA, Mexico — At 5 a.m. every Friday, a weekly ritual begins in this city on the Mexico-Guatemala border. For Haitians, it’s the only chance each week to meet with immigration officials.

In the pre-dawn darkness, people step off the sidewalks and form a single, silent line that snakes outside the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR). Women cradle sleeping babies against their chests. Others shift their weight, shaking legs numb after hours of standing. The air is anxious and hushed, broken only by the scrape of shoes on pavement, the calls of food vendors, and the steady procession of trucks carrying produce into the city.

By the time dawn breaks, hundreds of Haitian migrants seeking asylum are already standing outside COMAR. Many arrived the night before, sleeping on the sidewalks or taking turns resting against the building’s walls. Some clutch paper folders, thick with documents. Others hold just their phones. By mid-morning, heat clings to their skin like a second layer of clothing.

Roberto, an ironworker in his 20s who asked that his last name not be used for fear it might hurt his asylum claim, first took part in the Friday ritual on Oct. 4, 2024. He had just arrived in Tapachula that morning and, without sleeping, headed straight for the city’s COMAR office – one of three, back then – to begin the asylum process. As mandated, Roberto returns every two weeks for a procedural check-in.

From 2019 to 2025, roughly 47,000 Haitian nationals were listed as refugees in Mexico by the UNHCR. But increasingly, the number arriving from central America find themselves stuck in Tapachula. A key reason is Mexico’s policy that forbids asylum seekers from leaving the state where they first filed for protection.

Critics: Mexico’s migration system has fallen behind

An estimated 100,000 Haitians live in Mexico, Jesús Cisneros, Mexico’s ambassador in Haiti, said in a 2024 interview with Le Nouvelliste. More than 9,000 of 78,975 asylum applications filed in Mexico in 2024 were from Haitians, according to UNCHR-Mexico. Chiapas receives 60% of Mexico’s asylum applications.

The asylum process is supposed to last 45 business days. These days, with fewer COMAR staff members, the wait can take more than one year.

Schwarz C. Méroné explained that the framework behind. “This is one of the difficulties in providing an adequate response,” Méroné said.

Budget cuts, tighter US border impact felt

Conditions worsened after the U.S. cut its financial contributions. In one 2021 report by IMUMI, lawyers accused COMAR of exploitation. Asylum applications increased by 145 percent.