Migrant caravan re-forms in Mexico

Many cross into Mexico on rafts, by swimming or wading in full view of officials

Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 2,000 Central American migrants swam or rafted across a river separating that country from Guatemala, re-formed their mass caravan in Mexico and vowed to resume their journey toward the United States.

The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered on Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to come join them.

“We are going to reach the United States,” said Erasmo Duarte, a migrant from Danli, Honduras, despite warnings to turn back this week from US President Donald Trump, who has sought to make the caravan and border security into a campaign issue before the US midterm election in November.

The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some.

Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at US border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants. But many became impatient and began circumventing the border gate, crossing the river on rafts, by swimming or by wading in full view of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. ■

AFP Honduran migrants taking part in a caravan to the US wait to cross to Mexico, in Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala. Thousands of migrants forced their way through Guatemala’s northwestern border and flooded onto a bridge leading to Mexico, where riot police battled them.