MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Potential Argentine travelers advised not to pick Cancún as destination

Border controls at the Mexican air terminal are getting particularly tough, two couples from Córdoba who were deported explained

Right after US President Donald Trump upped his country's standards regarding border controls, two Argentine couples came forward this week to explain that they had been deported from Mexico after trying to spend some leisure time on the country's Caribbean beach. They also underlined they were subject to grossly harsh treatment despite having their travel papers in order.

Francisco and Flavia, from Córdoba, were detained after landing at Cancún despite having round-trip tickets, hotel reservations, and sufficient funds for their stay. They were subjected to mockery and mistreatment, including being placed in a detention room with other tourists in similar situations. Flavia, five months pregnant, faced particular distress. After six hours of detention, they were deported to Lima, where they remained for 15 hours without passports or cell phones before returning to Córdoba. Stories of Argentines having a bad time at the Mexican resort have been going viral on social media.

“On February 8, on Saturday, we left from Cordoba airport to Cancun, making a stopover in Lima. We arrived in Cancun at 6.30 p.m., the same Saturday. Right there we went through immigration, at the time we were calm, we were on vacation thinking about the beach, nothing more than that, like any other tourist. At that moment we began to see that strange things were starting to happen, like passengers being asked for a lot of things,” Francisco told a local broadcaster.

“A policewoman in immigration attended us and asked us for a round trip ticket, so we showed her that we had a round trip ticket for the 8th and a return ticket for the 21st. They asked us for the hotel reservation, one of them, the one in Isla Mujeres, was reserved through an application, but that was the reason why we were deported,” he went on.

Mexican authorities argued that the hotel stay should have been fully purchased, the traveler explained. He added that when contacted by telephone, the hotel claimed to have no record of their travel arrangements. Francisco showed the officer his cell phone operation, which did not include an option to pay for the stay, he insisted.

Eventually, the couple was taken to a detention facility “with glass, where there were no bars, we could not see anything from inside and it had a key, a padlock, everything. When we entered the place, there were 30 or 40 people of different nationalities who had gone through the same thing,” Francisco noted. “It was very cold,” he also mentioned.

Then they spent some 15 hours at Lima's airport before flying back to Córdoba.

Guillermina and Valentín were another couple among the many tourists who have reportedly gone through similar experiences this summer. They left on Christmas Day and intended to return on March 25. They were going to stay at his aunt's house, who lives in that country. Guillermina even admitted to having seen a video of an Argentinean woman who had been deported, so she had everything (travel itinerary, invitation letter, documents, etc.) printed out. But things took a turn for the worse when they said they intended to stay for three months. Valentín also mentioned that it was very cold in the room where they were.

The excuse was that they did not have their aunt's invitation in print. Just like in the other case, they had their mobile phones returned once onboard. During the stopover in Peru, they had their passports withheld but the treatment was not so hostile. They only recovered their documents in Córdoba.

The country that had an ambassador expelled for stealing a book is now tightening the screws on Argentine visitors.