Migrant caravan groups arrive by hundreds at U.S. border
ESCUINAPA, MEXICO — Migrants in a caravan of Central Americans scrambled Wednesday to reach the U.S. border, arriving by the hundreds in Tijuana, while U.S. authorities across the border were readying razor wire security barriers.
Authorities in Tijuana were struggling to deal with a group of 357 migrants who arrived aboard nine buses Tuesday and another group of 398 that arrived Wednesday.
Josue Vargas, an immigrant from Honduras who pulled into Tijuana Wednesday after more than a month on the road, said “Mexico has been excellent, we have no complaint about Mexico. The United States remains to be seen.”
On Tuesday, a couple of dozen migrants scaled the steel border fence to celebrate their arrival, chanting “Yes, we could!” and one man dropped to the U.S. side briefly as border agents watched from a distance. He ran back to the fence.
Tijuana’s head of migrant services, Cesar Palencia Chavez, said authorities offered to take the migrants to shelters immediately, but they initially refused.
“They wanted to stay together in a single shelter,” Palencia Chavez said, “but at this time that’s not possible” because shelters are designed for smaller groups and generally offer separate facilities for men, women and families.
But he said that after their visit to the border, most were taken to shelters in groups of 30 or 40.
With a total of three caravans moving through Mexico including 7,000 to 10,000 migrants in all, questions arose as to how Tijuana would deal with such a huge influx, especially given U.S. moves to tighten border security and make it harder to claim asylum.
On Wednesday, buses and trucks carried some migrants into the state of Sinaloa along the Gulf of California and further northward into the border state of Sonora.
The bulk of the main caravan appeared to be about 1,100 miles from the border, but was moving hundreds of miles per day.
The Rev. Miguel Angel Soto, director of the Casa de Migrante — House of the Migrant — in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan, said about 2,000 migrants had arrived in that area. He said the state government, the Roman Catholic Church and Escuinapa officials were helping.
The priest also said the church had been able to get “good people” to provide buses for moving migrants northward.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday defended the use of active duty troops on the U.S.Mexican border, saying that in some ways it provides good training for war. He argued that it’s analogous to a 1916 deployment to counter the Mexican revolutionary Gen. Francisco “Pancho” Villa.
Speaking to reporters on his way to visit U.S. troops along the border in south Texas, Mattis declined to provide an estimate of how much the mission will cost. He said cost figures he has received are “not anywhere near right.”
The Pentagon chief said that within a week to 10 days the 5,800 troops deployed for the border mission will have accomplished all the tasks initially requested by Customs and Border Protection, although additional tasks are being worked out between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. Mattis did not say how soon the whole mission might end; current deployments are scheduled to last until Dec. 15.