Caravan of 5,000 migrants headed for US

TAPACHULA, Mexico — About 5,000 migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti set out on foot from Mexico’s southern border Monday, walking north toward the United States.

The migrants complained that processing for refugee or exit visas takes too long at Mexico’s main migrant processing center in the city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. Under Mexico’s overwhelmed migration system, people seeking such visas often wait for weeks or months, without being able to work.

The migrants formed a long line Monday along the highway, escorted at times by police. The police are usually there to prevent them from blocking the entire highway, and sometimes keep them from hitching rides.

Monday’s march was among the largest since June 2022. Migrant caravans in 2018 and 2019 drew far greater attention. But with as many as 10,000 migrants showing up at the US border in recent weeks, Monday’s march is now just a drop in the bucket.

“We have been traveling for about three months, and we’re going to keep on going,” said Daniel González, from Venezuela. “In Tapachula, nobody helps us.”

In the past, he said, Mexico’s tactic was largely to wait for the marchers to get tired, and then offer them rides back to their home countries.

Irineo Mújica, one of the organizers of the march, said migrants are often forced to live on the streets in squalid conditions in Tapachula. He is demanding transit visas that would allow the migrants to cross Mexico and reach the US border.

“We are trying to save lives with this kind of actions,” Mújica said. “They have ignored the problem, and left the migrants stranded.”

The situation of Honduran migrant Leonel Olveras, 45, was typical of the marchers’ plight.

“They don’t give out papers here,” Olveras said of Tapachula. “They ask us to wait for months. It’s too long.”