Migrant caravan bides time, sneaks north into Mexico
FRONTERA HIDALGO, Mexico — Hundreds of Central American migrants crossed the river into Mexico from Guatemala on Thursday after a dayslong standoff with security forces and walked along a highway before stalling at a shaded crossroads.
Carrying U.S. and Honduran flags at the head of the procession, they had been walking on a highway toward hundreds of national guardsmen along the highway with riot shields and body armor and vans from the National Immigration Institute. The migrants still appeared to have superior numbers by at least double.
Jose Luis Morales, a Salvadoran leader of the caravan, said the migrants want to negotiate to be allowed to pass peacefully.
But the migrants halted late in the morning on the roadside about 6 miles north of the river border city of Ciudad Hidalgo, and a few miles from where a large deployment of security forces was waiting.
Federal officials arrived and began negotiating with Morales, who has emerged as a sort of de facto spokesman for the migrants.
He said afterward that authorities’ initial proposal was that they turn themselves in for detention while being processed for refuge — what he called “always the same policy.” Instead, they planned to stay put until today, Morales said.
Martha Heraldina Perdomo, who was traveling from Honduras with her three young children, said she hopes to work and build a better life for her kids. But Thursday afternoon she was preparing to bed down outdoors for the night with just some tortillas and water for nourishment.
The national guardsmen remained nearby.
Mexico has cracked down on previous large caravans after intense pressure from Washington last year.
Anibal, who declined to give his last name for fear of reprisal from immigration authorities, joined the majority Honduran caravan from his hometown of Santa Rosa, Guatemala.
He was determined to get to the U.S., no matter where, and work to save money and return to his wife and three kids. Back home he worked part time as a laborer, machinist, selling used clothing, but there wasn’t enough work.
Asked about assertions from Mexico’s president that migration must be regular and orderly, he said: “He needs to have a little more compassion … we’re going out of necessity. We’re not going for ambition.”
Thursday’s movement was a resurgence of a migrant caravan that had been diminishing since its last concerted attempt to cross the border Monday was turned back by Mexican national guardsmen posted along Suchiate river, which forms the border there.
The migrants awoke with a plan Thursday. By 4:30 a.m. they had all packed their belongings and were awaiting the call to move. They would not cross where Mexican authorities were posted across the river.
They prayed for about an hour before leaving and then walked upriver on the Guatemala side in the dark to near another bridge that handles commercial traffic between the two countries. There were no Mexican authorities on the opposite bank.
There the water was deeper, coming to the waist of a grown man, so a number of young men entered the river first and formed a human chain to keep the women and children who followed from being pulled by the current. When the first migrants crossed at 6 a.m., it was still pitch black.
The guardsmen awaited the caravan outside the community of Frontera Hidalgo, near Ciudad Hidalgo where the migrants crossed the Suchiate river at dawn.
Mexico began flying and busing members of the caravan back to Honduras on Tuesday.
Seven more buses left Mexico for Honduras on Wednesday, carrying 240 migrants back home, and two flights left with an additional 220 Hondurans, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said. By Wednesday, the number of people outside the Casa del Migrante in Tecun Uman was perhaps half of what it was at its peak Sunday night.
On Thursday, a multiday march for truth, justice and peace left the central Mexico city of Cuernavaca bound for the capital. The leader of that march, anti-crime activist Javier Sicilia, said part of Mexico’s problem was the “dozens of thousands of migrants treated without the dignity of human beings.”
Meanwhile, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s two-hour daily news conference was dominated by questions about the supply of cancer drugs as parents of children with cancer protested outside the national palace.