New, bigger migrant caravan headed north

Another migrant caravan – this one estimated at 15,000 people – is preparing to leave Honduras on January 15, according to migrant rights advocates and Spanishlanguage media.

‘‘They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan,’’ said Irma Garrido, a member of the migrant advocacy group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation.

Meanwhile, thousands of Central American migrants from a caravan that left Honduras in October remain stranded at the US-Mexico border and languishing in crowded Tijuana shelters while they wait out a lengthy process requests States.

Co-ordinators who helped direct the migrants on the 3200km trek with bullhorns, arranging for buses and giving advice along the way, have mostly vanished. Many of the migrants say they feel abandoned and unsure where to turn next. Some are ready to return home.

Garrido said this new, larger caravan will probably be joined by more people in El Salvador and in Guatemala, but she said they don’t plan on coming straight to the Tijuana-San Diego border, where resources are already stretched nearly to a breaking point. ‘‘They will stay in the south of Mexico in to file with the asylum United Chiapas and Oaxaca. Their aim is to request work there.’’

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged visas and work in Mexico for Central American migrants. In his inauguration speech, he pledged public works projects such as planting 2 million trees and construction of his Maya Train, which will link cities in the three Yucatan Peninsula states as well as Tabasco and Chiapas.

The US$8 billion (NZ$11.9b) project is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the southern states of Mexico.

Last week, Mexico and the United States agreed to develop a plan to curb Central American migration. The plan includes a US$25b investment from Mexico into its southern states over the next five years. The United States will contribute US$4.8b to Mexico and US$5.8b to the Northern Triangle of Central America, which is made up of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Most of the US funding will be allocated from existing aid programmes.

El Diario de Chiapas ,a newspaper for the southern state of Mexico, reported that, like the last caravan, news about the group’s plans to leave Honduras, their numbers and which routes they would be taking is spreading mostly by social media. – TNS