900 migrants continue trek to U.S. border
MEXICO CITY — About 900 Central American migrants headed out of Mexico City on Friday to embark on the longest and most dangerous leg of their journey to the U.S. border, while thousands more were waiting one more day at a massive improvised shelter.
The group that got a head start bundled their few possessions and started off, taking a subway to the north part of the city and then hiking down an expressway with a police escort.
For many, it was the first time they had ever been in a metro system, and they had little knowledge of the city or the 1,740 mile route to Tijuana that lay ahead of them.
Carlos Castanaza, a 29-year-old plumber from Guatemala City, wrapped himself from head to toe in a blanket against the cold and asked bystanders where the first toll booth was. When told it was in a town about 20 miles away, he carefully wrote the name of the town on his hand with a pen to remember where he was going.
Deported for driving without a license after a decade working in Connecticut, Castanaza was desperate to get back to his two U.S.-born children. “I’ve been wanting to get back for more than a year, but I couldn’t until the caravan came through,” said Castanaza. “That’s why I joined the caravan.”
Meanwhile, at least 4,000 migrants milled around the massive shelter improvised at a Mexico City sports complex, impatient to leave.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” shouted Eddy Rivera, 37, a rail-thin migrant from Honduras who said he couldn’t take staying in the camp any longer. “We are all sick, from the humidity and the cold,” said Rivera, who left behind four children and a wife in Honduras. “We have to get going, we have to get to Tijuana.”
Though he was unsure how an unskilled farmworker like himself would be allowed in the U.S., he had a simple dream: earn enough money to build a little house for his family back in Puerto Cortes, Honduras. Mexico City is more than 600 miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing at McAllen, Texas, but the area around the Mexican border cities of Reynosa, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo is so rife with drug gangs that the migrants consider it too dangerous to risk.
“California is the longest route but is the best border, while Texas is the closest but the worst” border, said Jose Luis Fuentes of the National Lawyers Guild.
Mark Stevenson and Christopher Sherman are Associated Press writers.