Migrant caravan stalls at soccer field, future unclear

MATIAS ROMERO, MEXICO – After days of walking from Mexico’s southern border, the caravan of hundreds of migrants that has drawn President Donald Trump’s Twitter ire has now halted on a browngrass soccer field, its participants unsure and anxious about the way forward.

The men and women, most from Central America, were squatting Tuesday in a walled public park while officials decided their fate.

“We are scared, just like you,” Irineo Mujica, the head coordinator of the migrant caravan, told the assembled group through a megaphone Tuesday morning. “Now President Donald Trump has said that he wants to hit us with nuclear bombs.”

Trump has made the migrant caravan a central theme in his tweets for three days running – although he hasn’t in fact threatened a nuclear strike. The president has warned that Mexico must stop the group or risk being penalized in the negotiations over reforming the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He also has threatened to reduce foreign aid to Honduras, the home country of many of the marchers.

For several years, migrants have traveled north in caravans through Mexico around this time of year, both to protect themselves from crime and to highlight the plight of those fleeing Central America to escape poverty and danger. Trump’s comments have turned the event into a fresh source of tension between the United States and its southern neighbors.

The Mexican government has denied that it is allowing the migrants to push unimpeded across its territory.

On Tuesday, several Mexican immigration officials began taking a census at the migrant encampment in the town of Matias Romero, in the southern state of Oaxaca. The migrants crowded around the officials and thrust out their IDS and documents.

Several hours later, the officials returned and started calling people’s names over megaphones. The authorities handed those individuals temporary legal permits, giving them 20 days to leave Mexico.