Trump to Honduras: Stop caravan

Administration warns it will cut aid if mass migration isn’t halted

MEXICO CITY — President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to withhold aid from the Honduran government if it did not halt a mass migration of as many as 2,000 people, mainly from Honduras, who crossed into Guatemala this week with the intention of reaching the United States.

“The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!” Trump said on his Twitter account.

The migrants began their march on Friday in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. Moving on foot and in vehicles, they crossed into Guatemala on Monday, pushed past two police roadblocks and came to a rest for the night in the town of Esquipulas.

Some estimates put the group’s size as large as 2,000 people.

Tens of thousands of Hondurans and other Central Americans have migrated north in recent years, fleeing rampant violence, poverty or a combination of those factors. Some have occasionally chosen to move in caravans — large, semi-coordinated groups — their size offering participants some degree of security against the many perils that lurk on the migrant trail.

Such caravans have been something of an annual event for years and have mostly happened without much fanfare or international attention.

Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Monday that the current caravan was “a result of well-advertised and well-known catch-and-release loopholes,” referring to unauthorized immigrants apprehended at the border who are released to await the processing of their cases.

“Until Congress acts, we will continue to have de facto open borders that guarantees future ‘caravans’ and record numbers of family units entering the country illegally,” Waldman said, according to the Associated Press.

It remained unclear what the Honduran government could do to bring back the migrants, now that they were on Guatemalan soil. There was no immediate public response from the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández.

The caravan formed a day after Vice President Mike Pence, at a meeting in Washington, pressed the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to do a better job stopping their citizens from emigrating. “

Tell your people: Don’t put your families at risk by taking the dangerous journey north to attempt to enter the United States illegally,” Pence said.