Growing caravan of migrants makes its way toward the U.S. border.
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — A growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border in southern Mexico on Sunday, overwhelming Mexican government attempts to stop them at the border.
Their numbers swelled to about 5,000 overnight and at first light they set out walking toward the Mexican town of Tapachula, 10 abreast in a line stretching approximately a mile.
Several hundred more already had applied for refugee status in Mexico and an estimated 1,500 were still on the Guatemalan side of the Suchiate River, hoping to enter Mexico legally.
It was not immediately clear where the additional travelers had materialized from because about 2,000 had gathered on the Mexican side Saturday night. But people have been joining and leaving the caravan daily, some moving at their own pace and strung out in a series of columns as they moved across Guatemala.
As they passed through Mexican villages, they drew applause, cheers and donations of food and clothing. Maria Teresa Orellana handed out free sandals to the migrants as they passed. “It’s solidarity,” she said. “They’re our brothers.”
In the tropical heat, Besi Jaqueline Lopez of San Pedro Sula in Honduras carried an improbable stuffed polar bear with a winter cap, the favorite — and only — toy of her two daughters, Victoria 4 and Elisabeth, 3, as they trudged beside her, covered in sweat.
A business administration graduate, Lopez said she couldn’t find work in Honduras. She wants to reach the U.S. but would stay in Mexico if she could find work. “My goal is to find work for a better future for my daughters,” she said.
The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow and most want to continue to the U.S., gathered Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.
On Sunday, federal police monitored the caravan’s progress from a helicopter and had a few units escorting it. Outside Tapachula about 500 federal police briefly gathered along the highway on buses and in patrol units, but officers said their instructions were to maintain traffic on the highway not stop the caravan. They moved on toward Tapachula before the caravan reached them.
President Trump has warned he would deploy the military to secure the border against the group. “Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther Border,” he tweeted Sunday.