Second migrant caravan enters Mexico
First caravan demands ‘safe and dignified’ transportation
NILTEPEC, Mexico — More than 1,000 people in a second migrant 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.
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 set up camp Tuesday in the Oaxaca state city of Juchitan, which was devastated by an earthquake in September 2017.
The two groups combined represent just a few days’ worth of the average flow of migrants to the United States.
Similar caravans also have occurred regularly over the years, passing largely unnoticed, but the new ones have become a hot-button political issue amid an unprecedented push-back from President Donald 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.
And on Tuesday he floated the possibility of ending the constitutional right to U.S. citizenship
for babies born in the country to noncitizens.
Experts widely dismissed the idea that the president could unilaterally change the rules on who is a citizen and said it’s highly questionable whether an act of Congress could do it, either.
“According to what they say, we are not going to be very welcome at the border,” Honduran migrant Levin Guillen said when asked about Trump. “But we are going to try.”
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.
The group is already significantly diminished from its estimated peak at over 7,000-strong. A caravan in the spring ultimately fizzled to about 200 people who reached the U.S. border at San Diego.
Representatives have demanded “safe and dignified” transportation to Mexico City, but the Mexican government has
shown no inclination to assist — with the exception of its migrant protection agency that gave some stragglers rides to the next town over the weekend.
Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the group supporting the caravan, has said it hopes to hold meetings in the Mexican capital with federal lawmakers and authorities as well as representatives of the incoming government that takes office Dec. 1 to discuss migrants’ rights and the caravan’s future.
But Mexican officials seem intent only on seeing the caravan melt away as it moves through the country. The government regularly reports the number of migrants who have applied for refugee status or agreed for
assisted bus trips back to their home countries.
The second caravan entered Mexico on Monday, crossing the Suchiate River from Guatemala. That followed a more violent confrontation on the border bridge over the river Sunday night, when migrants threw rocks and used sticks against Mexico police.
Hondurans in the group spoke of fleeing the same conditions: poverty and gang violence in one of the world’s deadliest countries by homicide rates. They said asylum in the United States is their primary goal, but some expressed openness to applying for protected status in Mexico if that doesn’t work out.