First of caravan reaches border at Tijuana
TIJUANA, Mexico — Central Americans in a caravan scrambled Wednesday to reach the U.S. border, arriving by the hundreds in Tijuana, while U.S. authorities across the border were readying razor wire security barriers.
Mexican officials in Tijuana were struggling to deal with 357 migrants who arrived aboard nine buses Tuesday and another group of 398 that arrived Wednesday.
“Mexico has been excellent; we have no complaint about Mexico. The United States remains to be seen,” said Josue Vargas, a Honduran who pulled into Tijuana on Wednesday after more than a month on the road.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, meanwhile, went to visit U.S. troops posted to the border in south Texas and said the deployment provides good training for war. President Donald Trump has said the caravan amounts to an “invasion.”
Speaking to reporters on his way to visit U.S. troops along the border in south Texas, Mattis declined to provide an estimate of how much the mission will cost. He said cost figures he has received thus far are “not anywhere near right.” He added that he believes, “very quickly we’ll know the real cost. So we’ll keep you posted as the real costs come in.”
The Pentagon chief said that within a week to 10 days the 5,800 troops currently deployed for the border mission will have accomplished all the tasks initially requested by Customs and Border Protection, although additional tasks are now being worked out between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. Mattis did not say how soon the whole mission might end; current deployments are scheduled to last until Dec. 15, but that could change.
In addition to the 5,800 active-duty troops in the border area, about 2,100 National Guard troops have been providing border support since April.
Asked whether he believes there is a security threat at the border that justifies the use of the active-duty military, Mattis said he defers to the judgment of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who joined him at the border Wednesday.
Nielsen and Mattis spoke with senior U.S. commanders and addressed rank-and-file troops. Mattis told the troops their mission is to “back up” Customs and Border Protection. “Right now that’s our role and that’s all our role is,” he said.
“The eyes of the world right now — certainly all of the Americans — are on you,” Mattis told the soldiers, adding that they are part of a “nontraditional” mission. “We’re here because of the number of illegals who say they are going to illegally try to cross into our country,” he said.
News of the U.S. military deployment didn’t deter arriving groups of Central Americans from going to a stretch of border fence in Tijuana to celebrate.
On Tuesday, a couple of dozen people scaled the steel border fence to celebrate their arrival, chanting “Yes, we could!” and one man dropped over to the U.S. side briefly as border agents watched from a distance. He ran quickly back to the fence.
Tijuana’s head of migrant services, Cesar Palencia Chavez, said authorities offered to take the travelers to shelters immediately, but they initially refused.
“They wanted to stay together in a single shelter,” Palencia Chavez said, “but at this time that’s not possible” because shelters are designed for smaller groups and generally offer separate facilities for men, women and families.
But he said that after their visit to the border, most were taken to shelters in groups of 30 or 40.
With a total of three caravans moving through Mexico including 7,000 to 10,000 travelers in all, questions arose as to how Tijuana would deal with such a huge influx, especially given U.S. moves to tighten border security and make it harder to claim asylum.
On Wednesday, buses and trucks carried some migrants into the state of Sinaloa along the Gulf of California and farther northward into the border state of Sonora.
The bulk of the main caravan appeared to be about 1,100 miles from the border, but was moving hundreds of miles per day.
The Rev. Miguel Angel Soto, director of the Casa de Migrante — House of the Migrant — in the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan, said about 2,000 people had arrived in that area. He said the state government, the Roman Catholic Church and city officials in Escuinapa, Sinaloa, were helping the migrants.
The priest also said the church had been able to get “good people” to provide buses for moving travelers northward. He said so far 24 buses had left Escuinapa on an eight-hour drive to Navojoa in Sonora state.
From Sonora, some migrants said they had already caught buses from to Tijuana.
About 1,300 people in a second caravan were resting at a stadium in Mexico City, where the first group had stayed last week. By early Wednesday, another 1,100 people from the third and last caravan also had arrived at the stadium.