Mexico is developing a cellphone app that will allow migrants to warn relatives and local consulates if they think they are about to be detained by the U.S. immigration department, a senior official said Friday. <\/p>\n
The move is in response to President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s threats to carry out mass deportations after he takes office on Jan. 20. <\/p>\n
The app has been rolled out for small-scale testing and \u201cappears to be working very well,\u201d said Juan Ram\u00f3n de la Fuente, Mexico\u2019s secretary of foreign affairs. <\/p>\n
He said the app would allow users to press a tab that would send an alert notification to previously chosen relatives and the nearest Mexican consulate. De la Fuente described it as a sort of panic button. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn case you find yourself in a situation where detention is imminent, you push the alert button, and that sends a signal to the nearest consulate,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
U.S. authorities are obliged to give notice to home-country consulates when a foreign citizen is detained. Mexico says it has beefed up consular staff and legal aid to help migrants in the legal process related to deportation. <\/p>\n
De la Fuente expects the app to be rolled out in January. He didn\u2019t say whether the app has a de-activation tab that would allow someone to rescind an alert if they weren\u2019t really detained. <\/p>\n
The government says it has also set up a call center staffed 24 hours a day to answer migrants\u2019 questions. <\/p>\n
The Mexican government estimates there are 11.5 million migrants with some form of legal residency in the United States, and 4.8 million without legal residency or proper documents. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Mexico is developing a cellphone app that will allow migrants to warn relatives and local consulates if they think they are about to be detained by the U.S. immigration department, a senior official said Friday. The move is in response to President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s threats to carry out mass deportations after he takes office on <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}