About 1,500 Migrants Form a New Caravan in Mexico

About 1,500 migrants formed a new caravan Wednesday in southern Mexico, hoping to walk or catch rides to the U.S. border. The migrants are mainly from Central and South America. Some say they are hoping to reach the United States before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, saying they think it might be more difficult after that. They started out walking from the city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, where thousands of migrants are stranded because they do not have permission to cross further into Mexico.

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Migrant caravans began forming in 2018, and they became a final, desperate hope for poorer migrants who do not have the money to pay smugglers. If migrants try to cross Mexico alone or in small groups, they are often either detained by authorities and sent back to southern Mexico, or worse, deported back to their home countries. In that sense, there is safety in numbers: it is hard or impossible for immigration agents to detain groups of hundreds of migrants. So police and immigration agents often try to pick off smaller groups, and wait for the main body of the caravan to tire itself out. Usually the caravans stop or fall apart within 150 miles (250 kilometers).

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Since migrants usually cannot find work to support themselves in Tapachula, most of the foreigners trapped there are desperate to leave. Some feel a sense of urgency, hoping to reach the border before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

“It is going to be more difficult, that’s why we are going in hopes of getting an appointment quicker so we are able to cross before he (Trump) takes office,” said Yotzeli Peña, 23, a migrant from Venezuela. “That would be easier.”

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