U.S. agents help as Guatemala blocks migrants at border

EL CINCHADO, Guatemala — Guatemalan police accompanied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept up the majority of a group of some 300 migrants Thursday, loaded them on buses and took them back to the Honduran border, effectively dashing their plans to travel together in a “caravan” with hopes of reaching the United States.

Near another border point, a different group of about 600 rested at a shelter after crossing the frontier earlier in the day and encountering no resistance from police. Other, smaller groups were traveling highways elsewhere in unorganized dribs and drabs in a movement involving several thousand people but far different in nature from previous caravans.

Praying and singing songs, the group of 300 migrants — adults, teens and young children — had set out from a shelter in Entre Rios under rainy skies before dawn and walked about six hours before stopping in the town of Morales to eat and rest. There they were challenged by police who asked for their entry documents, and nearly all had crossed into Guatemala irregularly and didn’t have such documentation.

The migrants were put on three gray buses and told they had to go back to register properly at a border station under rules governing freedom of travel in the Central American border agreement between Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

There was no violence in the encounter, though some wept and begged to be allowed to continue, while police gave them no choice but to go back. Red Cross workers gave several migrants anti-inflammatory medicine for wounds on their feet.

Guatemalan police who declined to be identified by name said the United States paid for the buses. The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala did not immediately confirm that.

The action effectively dissolved what had been the largest and most cohesive group that left the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Wednesday in response to a call for the first migrant caravan in many months. Guatemala’s tactics mirrored those employed last year by Mexico to discourage and break up caravans on its territory following intense pressure from Washington.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said Wednesday that the migrants would be allowed to pass through Guatemala, though he noted they would need the proper papers and predicted they would run into a “wall” in Mexico.

Almost immediately on Wednesday most of the migrants fractured into smaller groups, some as small as 20-30 people, and began walking along highways, boarding buses and hitching rides in private cars.