Migrant caravan becomes a Trump election strategy
‘Safety factor’ may help sway polarized races
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — The flyer began circulating on social media in Honduras this month, showing a lone migrant sketched against a bright red backdrop.
It was a call to join a caravan, the work of leftist activists and politicians who had helped lead migrants north in the past. But they also tossed a political spark into the mix, blaming their rightwing government for the exodus: “The violence and poverty is expelling us.”
They never expected it to ignite an international firestorm.
Far from Honduras, the White House was busy grappling with the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist whose death inside a Saudi consulate had tarnished Saudi Arabia, a vital ally of the Trump administration. And with the midterm elections in the United States only weeks away, President Donald Trump was eager to change the script.
The caravan gave him a new, politically advantageous story to tell. Stoking American anxieties about immigration had worked well as a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign. The president’s top aides, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, began briefing the president on the caravan’s progress the week before last, senior White House officials said.
Within days, the president began using Twitter to attack the migrants, putting the blame on Democrats and threatening to cut funding to Central American governments: “We are a great Sovereign Nation. We have Strong Borders and will never accept people coming into our Country illegally!”
What began as a domestic political dispute in Honduras — an effort to undermine newly re-elected President Juan Orlando Hernández and to call attention to the plight of migrants — quickly became an international row, a source of embarrassment in Honduras, consternation across the region, and political opportunism in the United States.
Initially planned as a modest caravan of a few hundred people, it grew quickly to about 7,000 as desperation, local media coverage and a swirl of domestic and American politics combined to transform it into the largest movement of migrants north through Mexico in recent history. Even those who helped spur the mass movement never imagined it would expand so much, so fast.
After Honduras’ divisive presidential election in November, which the Organization of American States found so problematic that it called for a new vote, people took to the streets in deadly protests against what they saw as a fraudulent vote count.
Despite the controversy, the Trump administration gave its official support to Hernández, a loyal ally who cooperated with Americans during his first term on issues like stopping the flow of drugs and migrants toward the border.
Newt Gingrich, the former speaker and an occasional Trump adviser, was among the Republicans following news of the caravan.
Republicans hope that the increased coverage of the migrants would prompt certain voter groups, like white suburban women, to veer away from Democratic candidates, , Gingrich said.
“It creates a safety factor” for those voters, he said. “If the first 7,000 to 15,000 get in, what signal does that send?”
Gingrich added: “Trump understands in the current American political structure you have to win polarized campaigns.”