Mexico granting caravan migrants transit visas

Trump critical of procession, Mexico permissiveness.

The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to people in a caravan of Central American migrants, and said the procession of 1,000 or so migrants that drew crit- icism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse.

Some migrants who awoke at the camp Wednesday said they would try their luck at requesting asylum in the United States, others in Mexico.

Elmer Zelaya Gomez, 38, from eastern El Salvador, has been sleeping with his wife and three children aged 7, 13 and 14 on the soccer field under blankets as they wait for temporary transit visas from Mexico to continue to the U.S. border. He hopes to request asylum and join relatives in New York.

“We didn’t leave our coun- tries just because we wanted to,” Zelaya Gomez said. “It’s for the safety of our chil- dren.”

Like many, he had joined the caravan because there was safety in numbers.

Now, the family faces the prospect of traveling solo; the caravan is scheduled to make its last stops this week at a migrants rights symposium in the central city of Puebla, and end in Mexico City.

“It seems a little complicated, with the robberies, kidnappings, and all of that,” Zelaya Gomez said. “It’s a little scary, to travel without the caravan.”

Organizer Irineo Mujica said, “We will try to find a better way of doing our caravans” in coming years. “We didn’t anticipate, or want, a caravan of this size.”

The caravan is an annual, symbolic event held around Easter each year to raise awareness about the plight of migrants and has never left southern Mexico, though some participants then con- tinue north on their own.

Trump’s strong criticism of the caravan and Mexico’s supposed permissiveness in allowing it to proceed, have confused and befuddled families here, who deny they are a threat. Many say they never intended on going all the way to the United States after the end of the “Stations of the Cross” caravan. Some are seeking asylum in Mexico itself.

Even coordinators of the caravan seemed to misunderstand the debate in the U.S. when Trump’s endorsed a “nuclear option” for pushing funding for his border wall through Congress. They told worried families Tuesday that the U.S. president had floated the idea of using a nuclear weapon against the caravan of mostly women and children who have fled violence in Central America.

The Mexican government said in a statement late Tues- day that its immigration pol- icy “is not subject to pres- sure,” but noted the caravan “began to disperse by deci- sion of the participants.” subject legal speak publicly between the typ as or