Migrant caravan halted in Mexico

MATIAS ROMERO, Mexico — The caravan of Central American migrants that angered President Donald Trump was sidelined at a sports field in southern Mexico with no means of reaching the border even as Trump tweeted another threat to Mexico on Tuesday.

The caravan that once numbered 1,150 or more people actually halted days ago in the town of Matias Romero in the southern state of Oaxaca, where participants slept out in the open.

After days of walking along roadsides and train tracks, the organizers now plan to try to get buses to take participants to the final event, an immigrants’ rights conference in the central state of Puebla later this week.

Bogged down by logistical problems, large numbers of children and fears about people getting sick, the caravan was always meant to draw attention to the plight of migrants and was never equipped to march all the way to the U.S. border.

“The idea was never for this group of people to reach the border. It was more to achieve a sensible and clear solution” to migrants’ need to leave their countries, said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the activist group behind the annual symbolic event.

With conditions bad in Honduras following that country’s hotly disputed November presidential elections, unexpectedly large numbers of people showed for this year’s march.

Mexican immigration officials began taking the names Monday of people in the mostly Honduran group interested in filing for asylum, or temporary transit or humanitarian visas in Mexico.