MEX. BRIGADE
Another caravan bound for US border
Yet another caravan of migrants has set off from southern Mexico, saying they are determined to make their way to the US border.
Like similar caravans in recent months, hundreds of migrants, who are mainly from Haiti, Central America and Venezuela, began walking Friday from Tapachula, a city on the Guatemalan border, according to a report.
The migrants, who were stuck in limbo in the border city, complained about overcrowded, unsanitary and prison-like conditions in camps that had sprung up around a federal building where transit visas were being processed.
Earlier this week, dozens of migrants reached a deal with Mexican authorities to halt their march north in exchange for work visas that would allow them to remain in the country, Reuters reported.
Luis Garcia Villagran of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, one of the caravan’s organizers, told Reuters the migrants struck a deal with federal authorities allowing them to settle in a group of Mexican states far from the Guatemala border, in exchange for ending the caravans. Mexico has also promised to provide housing for the migrants.
In order to ease the flow of migrants into the US, the Biden administration and Mexican authorities are in negotiations to bring back a Trump-era policy known as
Migrant Protection Protocols, which would require asylum seekers and migrants to wait in Mexico for hearings before US immigration judges.
Biden ended the so-called “remain in Mexico” policy when he entered the White House.
A federal judge ordered the administration to restart the program. In August, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Biden administration against the lower court’s ruling.
Nongovernmental organizations have said the “remain in Mexico” program exposed migrants to danger from criminal gangs in crime-riddled border towns in Mexico, where thousands of migrants were forced to wait in camps for months and sometimes more than a year for permission to cross into the US.