Caravan to disband:
Under pressure from Mexico and the U.S., a group of 1,000 migrants has abandoned plans to travel to the U.S. border.
Under pressure from Mexico and the United States, a caravan of more than 1,000 migrants moving through Mexico has abandoned plans to travel together to the U.S. border.
Instead of traveling to the U.S. border as originally planned, the caravan will disband in Mexico City, after some of the hundreds of migrants request documents to stay in Mexico.
But others will continue on their own to the U.S. to apply for asylum, Alex Mensing, an organizer with the advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, told The Arizona Republic.
The caravan of migrants, mostly from violence-wracked Honduras and other Central American countries, has infuriated President Donald Trump, who through a series of tweets has been putting pressure on Mexico to take action against the migrants.
On Wednesday, Trump’s administration announced the president planned to ask border governors to deploy National Guard troops to the Southwest to assist the Border Patrol in stopping people from entering the country illegally.
Mexico, in turn, announced that its government had deported about 400 of the migrants, while also processing requests from migrants for documents to stay in Mexico.
Trump has been tweeting about the caravan since Easter morning after the Fox News program “Fox & Friends” and other media outlets reported a caravan of more than 1,000 migrants was traveling to the U.S. border and Mexican authorities were doing little to stop them.
In the tweets, the president has threatened to end the North American Free Trade Agreement, and has blamed Democrats, Mexico and Central American countries for allowing migrants and drugs to flow into the U.S.
The caravan is still together in southern Mexico in the state of Oaxaca. Their next stop is in the state of Puebla, before continuing on to Mexico City, Mensing said in a text message.
The caravan is “still together, arranging documents with MX immigration, next stop Puebla, then meet with gov agencies, then many will go separate ways to apply for asylum in MX or USA,” the text said.
Organizers say the annual caravan of migrants is partly intended to call attention to the poverty and violence in Central America pushing people to leave and seek protection in other countries.
The migrant caravan left the town of Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas, Mexico’s most southern state, on March 25.
They had planned to travel on foot and by freight train through Mexico, eventually reaching Caborca, a wellknowing human-smuggling hub, in the state of Sonora, in late April or early May. Caborca is about a two-hour drive south of Lukeville.