Avast ye scurvy dogs! A wee band o' 1,500 scallywags be marchin' their way north from Mexico's south!
2024-01-25
Arr, a motley crew o' migrants from the fair realms o' Central and South America, weary o' lingerin' near the Guatemalan border, be settin' sail on a grand caravan towards the United States! Aye, me hearties, they be seekin' new shores and adventures!
A new caravan of about 1,500 migrants has started their journey north from southern Mexico. The migrants, mostly from Central and South America, decided to leave the Mexican city of Tapachula near the Guatemala border due to overloaded processing centers for asylum or visa requests. They claim that the process can take months. The group carried a sign stating that migrating is not a crime, but it is a crime for a government to use repression against migrants. Despite immigration agents and National Guard troopers standing by at checkpoints, the group managed to walk past them.One migrant, Alexander Girón from El Salvador, left his home country because his wages were not enough to cover basic necessities. In previous years, many people left El Salvador due to gang-related violence, but Girón stated that safety was not enough if there were no job opportunities. The earlier Christmas Eve caravan consisted of about 6,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Central America. However, after being promised unspecified documents by the Mexican government, the migrants decided to give up their trek. Eventually, about 2,000 migrants from that caravan resumed their journey through southern Mexico, but they were given papers restricting them to Mexico's southernmost Chiapas state.
Mexico has previously allowed migrants to pass through, assuming they would tire themselves out walking along the highway. However, no migrant caravan has ever walked the full 1,000 miles to the U.S. border. U.S. officials have been pressuring Mexico to do more to block migrants at its border with Guatemala or make it more difficult for them to move across Mexico. This pressure from the U.S. resulted in Mexico resolving the financial shortfall that had led to the suspension of deportations and other operations by its immigration agency. Some deportations have since been resumed.