Siglo XXI: My 24 hours in Mexico’s 21st-century migrant prison

I got to experience first-hand the fallout of US border militarisation policies.

On July 11, I found myself imprisoned at Mexico’s infamous Siglo XXI “migration station” in Tapachula – a city in the state of Chiapas near the border with Guatemala – which specialises in detaining US-bound migrants from Central America and beyond. Mine was a curious predicament, to say the least, for a citizen of the United States, exempt as we usually are from the fallout of border militarisation policies that make the world safe for US imperialism. I had come to Tapachula for four days to write about migrants. When I attempted to board my return flight to Mexico City, I was apprehended for visa irregularities of my own and loaded into a van bound for Siglo XXI, which means “21st century” in Spanish.