Migrants set out anew on trek for U.S. border

Trump has made caravan a rallying call for midterms.

HUIXTLA, MEXICO — Thousands of Central American migrants renewed their hopedfor march to the United States on Wednesday, setting out before dawn with plans to travel another 45 miles of the more than 1,000 miles that still lie before them.

The five days of walking in the southernmost reaches of Mexico — after seven days in Honduras and Guatemala — were beginning to show: Mexican authorities said Wednesday that about 500 migrants had accepted an offer to be bused back to their countries. Many said they were sick or exhausted, especially the children who toddled or were carried along on the march.

Still, the size of the caravan — estimated by the United Nations at more than 7,000 strong — seemed basically undiminished as the throng set out in darkness cut by occasional flashlights or the spotlights of municipal police who were escorting them.

While the group has been discouraged by Mexico’s government — and prompted threats of aid cutoffs for their homelands from President Donald Trump — marchers have had an outpouring of help from locals as they pass by.

Neighbors have supplied the marchers — many of them largely penniless — with food, and passers-by have stopped to give them rides in cars, pickups, even dump trucks.

Such caravans have taken place regularly, if on a smaller scale, over the years, but Trump has seized on the phenomenon this year and made it a rallying call for his Republican base ahead of Nov. 6 midterm elections.

Trump has blamed Democrats for what he said were weak immigration laws and claimed that MS-13 gang members and unknown “Middle Easterners” were hiding among the migrants.

Trump later acknowledged there was “no proof ” of the claim Middle Easterners were in the crowd. But he tweeted Wednesday that the U.S. “will never accept people coming into our Country illegally!”

The caravan had advanced about 45 miles since crossing the border from Guatemala, and marchers hoped to trek another 45 miles on Wednesday to the town of Mapastepec.

Even if marchers eventually reach the distant U.S. border, many have low odds of qualifying for asylum: The United States does not consider things like fleeing from poverty or gang violence as a qualifying factor.

Nearly 1,700 from the current caravan have already dropped out and applied for asylum in Mexico, and hundreds more have decided to return home. The numbers could thin further as people decide to take their chances in Mexico or strike out on their own.

RODRIGO ABD / ASSOCIATED PRESS Migrants with a caravan to the U.S. crowd on to a tractor as they make their way to Mapastepec, Mexico, on Wednesday.