Thousands are crossing Mexico’s southern border
On the day this week that Mexico imposed new measures to shut down migrant crossings at its southern border, some 1,200 made the trip at a single remote jungle outpost without showing a document to anyone.
A man who helped board the migrants for the fiveminute boat ride Sunday from Guatemala across the Usumacinta River knew the count because each one received a ticket.
Mexico wants to again appear cooperative, as in 2019 when, faced with tariffs from then-President Donald Trump, it deployed its newly created National Guard to slow the flow of migrants from Central America.
But the reality is it’s business as usual, with entire communities making a living off the passing migrants.
Their reasons for heading north are familiar: violence, an inability to support their families, the devastation wrought by two major hurricanes in November and egged on by rampant misinformation.
In the riverside Guatemalan community of La Tecnica, across the from the frontier Mexican town of Frontera Corozal, a steady stream of vans arrived Wednesday. From each a dozen migrants exited, ate something, made calls to relatives.
“We’re almost there,” one young woman said into her cellphone as she ate breakfast on a street lined with restaurants, bathrooms and small convenience stores near the river.
Within an hour there were more than 100 migrants at the river’s edge. They were mostly from Honduras, many women with children barely old enough to walk.
They were led onto boats powered with outboard motors, everything organized and out in the open. When they reached the other side, only Mexico lay between them and the U.S. border.