Migrant caravan stalls in Mexico

Group says it has no plans to reach American border

MATIAS ROMERO, Mexico — The caravan of Central American migrants that angered President Donald Trump was sidelined at a sports field in southern Mexico with no means of reaching the U.S. border on Tuesday.

The caravan that once numbered 1,150 or more people actually halted days ago in the town of Matias Romero in the southern state of Oaxaca, where participants slept out in the open. After days of walking along roadsides and train tracks, the organizers now plan to try to get buses to take participants to the final event, an immigrants’ rights conference in the central state of Puebla this week.

The caravan is bogged down by logistical problems, large numbers of children and fears about people getting sick.

“The idea was never for this group of people to reach the border. It was more to achieve a sensible and clear solution” to migrants’ need to leave their countries, said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the activist group behind the annual symbolic event.

Mexican immigration officials are taking the names of people interested in filing for asylum or temporary transit or humanitarian visas in Mexico. About 150 men already broke off from the march Sunday, hopping a freight train north. But the rest of the migrants at the camp seemed unlikely to move again until Wednesday or Thursday.

In a statement late Monday, Mexico’s government said about 400 participants in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries. “Under no circumstances does the Mexican government promote irregular migration,” the Interior Ministry statement said.

The department also said that, unlike in previous yearly caravans, “this time Mexican immigration authorities have offered refugee status” to participants who qualify. But it suggested it is not up to Mexico to keep people from going to the U.S. to apply for asylum.