TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) – A new small caravan of about 1,500 migrants began walking north from southern Mexico on Thursday, a week after a large group that left on Christmas Eve largely dispersed. Ta.
The migrants, most from Central and South America, were tired of waiting in Tapachula, a city in southern Mexico near the Guatemalan border. They said centers that process asylum and visa applications are overloaded and processing can take months.
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The migrants held placards that read, “Immigration is not a crime. Government oppression of immigrants is a crime.”
The group managed to walk through two highway control checkpoints Thursday as immigration agents and National Guard troops stood by.
A new caravan of 1,500 Mexican migrants is now heading north. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Immigrant Alexander Girón said he left his native El Salvador because his wages were not enough to cover basic necessities.
In the past, many people have left El Salvador due to gang-related violence. But despite the Salvadoran government's tough crackdown on gangs, which has lowered murder rates and jailed tens of thousands of people, Girón said he still has to leave the country.
“If you don't have a job, safety is not enough,” said Gillon, who was hoping to travel to the United States with his wife and two teenage sons. Find him a job and give his sons a better life. ”
Previous Christmas Eve caravans once included about 6,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Central America. But after New Year's Day, the Mexican government convinced them to abandon the trip by promising to obtain unspecified documents.
By the following week, about 2,000 migrants in that caravan resumed their journey through southern Mexico, after the participants were left stranded without the documents the Mexican government had apparently promised them.
Migrants were seeking transit or exit visas that would allow them to ride buses or trains to the U.S. border. But they were given documents restricting them to Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, where jobs are scarce and most of the local population is impoverished. As of last week, only about 100 or two people had reached the border with neighboring Oaxaca state and Veracruz state on the Gulf Coast, mostly by bus.
Mexico once allowed migrants to pass through because they thought walking on the highways would be tiring. No migrant caravan has ever walked her 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to the U.S. border.
U.S. officials met with Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador in December to discuss ways Mexico could help stem the flow of migrants.
López Obrador said U.S. authorities would force Mexico to either stop migrants at the border with Guatemala or make it more difficult for them to cross Mexico by train, truck or bus (a policy known as “contest”). He acknowledged that he is requesting that further measures be taken.
Mexico felt pressure to address the issue after U.S. authorities temporarily closed two critical Texas rail borders, saying they were overwhelmed with migrants. This halted the movement of grain south from Mexico for export to the United States and for Mexican livestock.
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the surge in border crossings seen at the southwestern U.S. border in December coincided with a period when “Mexico's immigration enforcement agencies were underfunded.”
López Obrador later said the funding shortfall that caused Mexico's immigration authorities to suspend deportations and other operations had been resolved, and some deportations later resumed.
