Migrants vow to re-form caravan, continue to U.S.

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — About 2,000 Central American migrants who circumvented Mexican police at a border bridge and swam, forded and floated across the river from Guatemala decided Saturday to re-form their mass caravan and continue their trek northward toward the United States.

Gathered at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo, the migrants voted by a show of hands.

“Let’s all walk together!” and “Yes we can!” they cried, defying warnings to turn back from President Donald Trump.

The group’s decision capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some of them.

Mexico had sought to maintain order after a chaotic Friday in which thousands rushed across the bridge only to be halted by a phalanx of officers in riot gear. Authorities began handing out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at U.S. border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.

But despite a continued heavy police deployment on the bridge, a steady stream of migrants made it to Mexican soil with relative ease by crossing the Suchiate River that demarcates the notoriously porous border.

They swam, waded or paid locals who charge the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry people and goods across the muddy waters.

“We don’t yet know if we will make it to the [U.S.] border, but we are going to keep going as far as we can,” said Rodrigo Abeja, one of the migrants’ leaders, adding that they would strike out Sunday morning for the city of Tapachula.

Immigration agents processed migrants in small groups and then bused them to Tapachula, where the Red Cross set up small blue tents on the concrete floor.

Mexico’s Interior Department said in a statement that it had received 640 refugee requests by Hondurans at the border crossing. It released photos of migrants getting off buses at a shelter and receiving food and medical attention.