WHAT’S NEXT FOR MIGRANT CARAVAN?
A church in Puebla, Mexico, has been converted into a shelter for several hundred migrants from Central America who are seeking asylum. NICK OZA/THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
MEXICO CITY — The caravan of hundreds of migrants from Central America traveling through Mexico has diminished since angering President Donald Trump earlier this week and helping prompt him to deploy National Guard troops to the Southwest border.
Many of the migrants fleeing poverty and gang violence in Honduras and other Central American countries plan to remain in Mexico, where the government has been processing documents to allow them to stay, according to multiple posts on social media.
But some of the migrants are determined to continue their journey all the way to the U.S. border to apply for asylum in this country.
“I would say the caravan has not disbanded for now, in the sense that planned activities are still taking place,” said Alex Mensing, an organizer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras.
By Friday afternoon, roughly 630 migrants — about half women and children — arrived by bus in Puebla, about two hours by car south of here. They were staying in four shelters.
In the next few days, they will be meeting with volunteer Mexican and U.S. lawyers. The lawyers will explain what asylum laws are in each country to see if they might qualify, according to Jordi Ruiz Cirera, a freelance photographer who said he has been traveling with the caravan.
On Monday, the migrants plan to head for Mexico City, where the caravan will end after a series of demonstrations they plan to hold at key sites to call attention to the plight of migrants fleeing Central America.
Mensing said it’s unclear how many migrants will try to enter the United States and
apply for asylum. That will depend on their meetings with lawyers.
Many have already decided to stay in Mexico, he said, but some have relatives in the U.S. and are expected to continue on.
Trump tweeted on Thursday that the migrant caravan had disbanded under pressure from Mexico and the United States.
“The Caravan is largely broken up thanks to the strong immigration laws of Mexico and their willingness to use them so as not to cause a giant scene at our Border,” Trump tweeted. “Because of the Trump Administrations actions, Border crossings are at a still UNACCEPTABLE 46 year low. Stop drugs!”
At its peak, organizers had estimated more than 1,000 migrants had joined the caravan. The caravan left Tapachula, a town in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas bordering Guatemala, on March 25. Organizers originally said the caravan planned to travel through Mexico to the U.S. border, a journey of more than 2,000 miles, ending in Caborca in the state of Sonora, south of Arizona.
The migrants arrived in Puebla, the capital of the state with the same name, after leaving the town of Matias Romero in the southern state of Oaxaca.
Raul Gonzalez, 58, a Mexico City resident who drives a shuttle van for a living, said the plight of Central American migrants is “a very complicated issue.”
He believes Mexico takes its marching orders from the United States, which is why the government is allowing many to apply for documents to remain in Mexico. But he said Mexico is a poor country compared with the U.S. and is kept down economically by the U.S. Therefore, the U.S., not Mexico, should be accepting the Central American migrants, he said.
The caravan, an annual event, was traveling as a group for protection from criminals who prey on migrants, and to call attention to conditions in Central America pushing people to leave their countries and seek protection in other countries.
“What it really is is a political act to draw attention to the plight of migrants coming from Central America, coming to the U.S. or Mexico, in order to seek refuge or asylum,” said Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
With migrants traveling on foot and on freight trains, organizers expected it would take more than a month for the caravan to reach Caborca in late April or early May and then disperse, with some migrants heading to Tijuana to apply for asylum in the U.S. at the San Ysidro port of entry south of San Diego.
The caravan was still roughly 1,750 miles from the U.S. border, in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, when Trump became enraged apparently after the Fox News program “Fox & Friends” and other media outlets reported that hundreds of migrants traveling in a caravan were headed for the U.S. and Mexico was doing little to stop them. In a series of tweets, Trump blamed Democrats, Mexico and Central American countries for allowing undocumented immigrants and drugs to flow into the U.S.
Trump threatened to end the North American Free Trade Agreement to put pressure on Mexico to do more to stop migrants from Central America from reaching the U.S. The tweets culminated with Trump signing a presidential proclamation on Wednesday directing his administration to work with border governors to deploy National Guard troops to help guard the Southwest border.
In the proclamation, Trump characterized the arrival of migrants from Central America as a bordersecurity threat on par with opioids and other illicit drugs “flowing across our southern border” and transnational gangs, including MS-13.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto this week urged Trump to stop with the “threatening or disrespectful attitudes” and constructively discuss the issues with Mexico.
The Mexican Senate also adopted a resolution urging its government to stop working with the United States on illegal immigration and drug trafficking, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
This is not the first time a president has deployed National Guard troops to the Southwest border. In 2006, President George W. Bush deployed about 6,000 National Guard troops in response to requests for help securing the border from the governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.
In 2010, President Barack Obama sent about 1,200 troops to the border to help support the Border Patrol.
But conditions at the border were much different then, said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under former President Bill Clinton. She is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a research group. Border Patrol apprehensions are way down, Meissner said, and the Border Patrol has far more agents.
In 2006, the Border Patrol recorded more than 1 million apprehensions of undocumented bordercrossers, the majority of them from Mexico.
In fiscal 2017, Border Patrol apprehensions fell to 310,000, the lowest levels since the 1970s, as the flow of undocumented immigrants from Mexico dropped off sharply. But the number of migrants from Central America has increased.
Border Patrol staffing, meanwhile, jumped from 12,349 in fiscal 2006 to 19,437 in fiscal 2017, according to Border Patrol data.