US warning: ‘You will not be successful’
HUIXTLA, MEXICO: The centre of this town about 80kilometres north of Mexico’s southern border has been transformed into a giant homeless camp.
Thousands of Hondurans began arriving here early on Tuesday and by late yesterday filled up the central plaza.
Exhausted, they decided to spend the day seeking out whatever shade they could find from the sweltering heat.
‘‘We’re tired, we’re hungry, but we are determined to continue this journey,’’ said Eve lyn Perdono, a 31yearold mother of four who was seated on a low stone wall next to her sister and infant niece.
In the 11 days since the caravan left Honduras, the political controversy surrounding it has shown no sign of fading.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo yesterday told reporters without an accounting of who was in the caravan, it posed ‘‘an unacceptable security risk’’ to the United States. ‘‘You will not be successful in getting into the United States, illegally, no matter what,’’ he warned the migrants.
President Donald Trump, who had tweeted that ‘‘criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in’’ the caravan, acknowledged when pressed by reporters on Tuesday he had no evidence for that claim.
‘‘There’s no proof of anything, but they very well could be,’’ Trump said during a Bill signing in the Oval Office.
He said Border Patrol officials told him that ‘‘over the course of a number of years they’ve intercepted many people from the Middle East’’ including members of Islamic State, ‘‘wonderful people from the Middle East’’ and ‘‘bad ones’’.
Vicepresident Mike Pence said it would be ‘‘inconceivable’’ that some Middle Easterners were not in the caravan, based on his own claim — since widely debunked — that each day the United States prevents 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists from entering the country.— TCA