A very common destination among Colombians who travel to Mexico is Cancun, a city located on the Yucatan Peninsula, especially known for the beauty of its beaches. The problem is that, in recent years, there has been an increasing number of travelers from Colombia who cannot enter the country, and end up being mistreated by the authorities, before being deported.
The non-admission of many Colombians is a nightmare that begins with the so-called “rejection room”, the place where people who the country does not admit for entry are transferred.
The complaints come from months ago. The most recent case that became known was that of Colombian youtuber Pablo Rabelo, who recently shared with WEEK details of your traumatic experience. Rabelo had scheduled a trip to attend as speaker international and Colombian youtuber to a conference, but upon arrival in Mexico, not only was he not admitted, but according to what he told SEMANA, he was mistreated during his passage through the “rejection room”, the place where people who do not enter the country remain. . Finally, after several hours, he was deported to Colombia.
The youtuber said that, initially, they took him to a normal room, where they left him incommunicado and without a passport. At that time, they did not give him any information about what was happening, then they took him to the “rejection room”.
“There they asked us to take out everything we had in our pockets, that we could only keep the money. They also asked us to remove our shoelaces. They searched me as if I was suspected of a crime or a dangerous person,” Rabelo told SEMANA.
The rejection room, according to their testimony and the shared videos, has some cabins and a bathroom for more than 20 people who can be there simultaneously.
“In the small room I was crowded with more than 20 men, because the women and children are taken to another room. There were several cabins. There are no windows and at least six cameras and several microphones watched us,” says Rabelo.
The main problem of those who are detained in the “rejection room” is that the exit does not depend on Mexico Migration, but directly on the airline with which the person traveled. If the airline doesn’t have regular trips scheduled, the person being deported will have to wait there for days.
“They told me that the airline that had transported me was in charge, from that moment, of my food and my transportation. That the airline that had brought me was in charge of boarding me on the next available flight. From that moment on, I stopped being a passenger, to become a quasi-detainee, someone unwanted, an insert,” says the youtuber.
what about the colombians
According to Rabelo’s statements, although there are inadmissible persons of various nationalities, the largest proportion are Colombians. There are frequent testimonies from Colombians that corroborate it and, according to the portal It is reported about tourism on the continent, it is a fact that happens more frequently to Colombians, especially at the Cancun airport.
Rabelo, for example, told WEEK a confrontation he saw between a Colombian detainee and the soldiers who were watching them, who was crying out to know how his daughter and wife were doing. “The man was quite irritated. The Navy arrived and they started arguing. They didn’t come to blows, but almost. The man, who was of Colombian origin, did not return,” says Pablo.
María Fernanda Grueso, Colombian consul in Cancun for the beginning of the year, told It is reported that “every day some 85 foreigners are declared inadmissible at the Cancun International Airport, many of them Colombian nationals.”
The problem seems to mainly affect those who travel by low-cost airlines. According to the consul’s statements, rejections at the Cancun airport have increased exponentially. While in 2018, the figure was around 10 rejections a day, in 2021 it reached almost 80. Only in January of this year, the number of inadmissible people was 2,665, an average of 85 daily. Most of the people are of Venezuelan and Colombian nationalities.
The most complicated part of the panorama is that the non-admissions are not clarified by the authorities, and apart from carrying out the deportation process, the reason for refusal to enter the country is not explained to people.