TAPACHULA — Several thousand migrants left southern Mexico walking on Sunday in what is the largest caravan formed this year and which takes place on the eve of a high-level delegation from the United States arriving in the country to reach an agreement with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador new measures to control the growing flow of migrants through the region.
Some 6,000 people, including families and children – many of them Central Americans, Venezuelans, Cubans and Colombians, among other nationalities – left the city of Tapachula in the morning, almost on the border with Guatemala, under the eyes of police officers. and the National Guard who remained attentive to the situation but made no attempt to stop them.
The formation of these groups has been constant in recent years due to the slowness of the immigration regulation processes in Tapachula and the lack of resources, decent living and work options so that foreigners can afford to wait for documents.
“We have been waiting in Tapachula for three to four months… but we do not have an answer,” said Honduran Cristian Rivera, who left his wife and son in Honduras and was traveling alone. “We hope that with this walk we can carry out a change and they can give us permission to go upstairs.”
Security forces only observe
A few years ago, security forces tried to block these groups by force. Since the end of 2021, the authorities have chosen to let migrants get tired of walking and try to break up the groups by offering them temporary documentation that, in many cases, foreigners use to continue the journey north on their own.
As on other occasions, The group left coinciding with important appointments on the immigration agenda and, in this case, it takes place days before the arrival in Mexico City of the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House National Security Advisor, Liz Sherwood-Randallsent by President Joe Biden to try to agree on new immigration measures with López Obrador.
The region is experiencing an unprecedented flow of migrants. More than half a million migrants crossed the Darién jungle this year, on the border between Colombia and Panama. Mexico detected more than 680,000 foreigners in an irregular situation from January to November. And on some days this December, US authorities have seen up to 10,000 illegal crossings a day on their border. All according to official figures from the respective countries.
In addition, a record number of almost 137,000 people requested refuge in Mexico.
Lack of budget
At the beginning of December, the National Migration Institute ordered the temporary cancellation of various migrant transfer and return operations due to lack of budget and the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance suspended service in its offices until January due to the holiday period.
López Obrador acknowledged that Americans want Mexico to do more to block migrants to the south, on the border with Guatemala, and to make it more difficult for them to pass through the country.
On Friday, after a conversation with President Biden, the Mexican president assured that it is not only about containment but also about increasing development cooperation and solving “political problems” that encourage migration, among them with countries like Cuba and Venezuela.
The largest caravan
The current caravan would be the largest since June 2022 when a large group left coinciding with the Summit of the Americas that was then held in the United States focused on the issue of migration.
Subsequently, two groups of several thousand people were formed, one in October—shortly after a summit of regional leaders among whom were the main expellers of migrants—and another smaller one in November, of about 3,000, which blocked for more 30 hours the main customs in southern Mexico.
None of these groups had the size and impact of the massive caravans that crossed Mexico at the end of 2018 and that ended up with tens of thousands of migrants on the border with the United States, putting the authorities of both countries in check.
Source: With information from AP
