Mexico slowly processes migrants at south border

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — Mexican authorities for a second straight day Saturday refused mass entry to a caravan of Central American migrants held up at the border with Guatemala, but began accepting small groups for asylum processing and gave out some 45-day visitor permits that would theoretically allow recipients time to reach the United States.

Seeking to maintain order after a chaotic Friday in which thousands rushed across the border bridge only to be halted by a phalanx of officers in riot gear, authorities began handing out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when large numbers of migrants show up there.

Once they were processed, migrants were bused to an openair, metal-roofed fairground in the nearby city of Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor. Easily 3,000 people or more the previous day, the crowd on the bridge thinned out noticeably.

But the slow pace frustrated those stuck on the bridge, where conditions were hot and cramped, and some pleaded at the main gate: “Please let us in, we want to work!” Behind it, workers erected tall steel riot barriers to channel people in an orderly fashion.

Each time a small side gate opened to allow small groups in for processing, there was a crush of bodies as migrants desperately pushed forward.

At least a half-dozen migrants fainted amid the heat, and a steady stream abandoned the bridge to cross the Suchiate River by swimming, fording its shallows with the aid of ropes or floating in groups of about 10 on rickety rafts.

Migrants have commonly cited widespread poverty and gang violence in Honduras, one of the world’s deadliest nations by homicide rate, as their reasons for joining the caravan.