2nd caravan begins trek inside Mexico
NILTEPEC, Mexico — More than 1,000 migrants in a second caravan that forged its way across the river from Guatemala began walking through southern Mexico on Tuesday and reached the city of Tapachula — some 250 miles behind a larger group and more than 1,000 miles from the closest U.S. border.
Gerbert Hinestrosa, 54, a straw-hatted migrant from Santa Barbara, Honduras, was traveling with his wife and teenage son in the newest group.
“Right now I feel good,” he said. “We have barely started, but I think it is going to be very difficult.”
Members of the latest caravan say they aren’t trying to catch up with the first because they believe it has been too passive and they don’t want to be controlled. The activist group Pueblo Sin Fronteras has been accompanying the first group and trying to help it organize.
The first, larger caravan of about 4,000 mainly Honduran migrants passed through Tapachula about 10 days ago and was setting up camp in the Oaxaca state city of Juchitan.
The two groups combined represent just a few days’ worth of the average flow of migrants to the United States, and similar ones have occurred regularly over the years, passing largely unnoticed, but this year they have become a hotbutton political issue amid an unprecedented push-back from President Trump.
With just a week before U.S. midterm elections, the Pentagon announced it will deploy 5,200 troops to the Southwest border in an extraordinary military operation, and Trump has continued to tweet and speak about the migrants. On Monday he said he wants to build tent cities to house asylum seekers.
The first caravan was still about 900 miles from the nearest U.S. crossing at McAllen, Texas, and possibly much farther if it heads elsewhere. Worn down from long miles of walking and frustrated by the slow progress, many have been dropping out and returning home or applying for protected status in Mexico.
It’s already significantly diminished from its estimated peak at over 7,000-strong. A caravan in the spring ultimately fizzled to just about 200 people who reached the U.S. border at San Diego.
Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the group supporting the caravan, has said it hopes to hold meetings in the Mexican capital with federal lawmakers to discuss migrants’ rights and the caravan’s future.