According to to a document sent to the Federal Commission for Better Regulations bearing the signature of Interior Secretary Francisco Ramírez Acuña, visitors from non-government organizations and clergy to the nation´s 45 detention centers will be required to file more paperwork to be admitted. Station employees will also be given the authority to deny the migrants access to visitors or isolate them from other detainees for as long as 20 days.

Since 2001, detained migrants have been allowed to be visited by family members, friends, consular representatives from their country, human rights observers and clergy during visiting hours at the centers.

But now, according to the new regulations, religious representatives and observers from non-government organizations will be required to fill out detailed forms describing what activities they will carry out inside the station, along with certified copies of documents to verify the legal existence of their organization or religion.

The new rules will go into effect when they are approved by the regulation commission, but it was unclear late Sunday when that would be, or whether the agency could veto the proposed changes.

Advocates of migrants´ rights say the measures will reduce transparency at the detention centers.

"I see (in the National Migration Institute) a fear of human rights, of accusations, of being pointed out for violations, but more than anything else a fear of people," said Alejandro Solalinde, a crusading priest who works in Oaxaca state to protect Central Americans headed north to the United States from organized crime rings and local police who kidnap them and demand a ransom for their release. "It is deplorable that this institute, instead of improving transparency, is putting more obstacles. It is inexplicable that they would limit humanitarian aid to these people who are so vulnerable, and these actions would seem to keep them in isolation."

The National Migration Institute is run by the Interior Secretariat.

In January, Solalinde was beaten and briefly jailed by local police after he tried to help a group of Central American migrants locate relatives who had been kidnapped in the town of Ixtepec, Oaxaca, an important rail junction in southern Mexico.

PERILOUS JOURNEY

Many Central American migrants hitch onto freight trains to carry them north and towards the United States. The journey is wrought with peril, with migrants losing limbs from falling off the trains, and others being robbed and kidnapped by criminal rings and local authorities.

Edgar Cortez, from the Mexican Network for All Rights for Everyone, an activist group, said the new regulations "would seem to be a strategy to further limit visits to detention centers and the monitoring of their conditions."