They expect to somehow cross into America…
This is gonna be a media story….
And a test for the Trump admin border cops….
The number of adults and children is over 1,000 and growing according to reports…
For five days now hundreds of Central Americans — children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.
Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants.
Organizers like Rodrigo Abeja hope that the sheer size of the crowd will give immigration authorities and criminals pause before trying to stop them.
“If we all protect each other we’ll get through this together,” Abeja yelled through a loudspeaker on the morning they left Tapachula, on Mexico’s border with Guatemala, for the nearly monthlong trek.
When they get to the US, they hope American authorities will grant them asylum or, for some, be absent when they attempt to cross the border illegally. More likely is that it will set up an enormous challenge to the Trump administration’s immigration policies and its ability to deal with an organized group of migrants numbering in the hundreds….
THIS could be the story of the year if things go sideways at the border….
Update…
….”Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the U.S. They laugh at our dumb immigration laws. They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!” Trump wrote in one. “With all of the money they make from the U.S., hopefully they will stop people from coming through their country and into ours.”
Mexico’s interior secretary, Alfonso Navarrete Prida, rejected such pressure.
“We will act with complete sovereignty in enforcing our laws,” he said Monday. “Of course we will act … to enforce our immigration laws, with no pressure whatsoever from any country whatsoever.”
In a statement late Monday, Mexico’s government said about 400 participants in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries. “Under no circumstances does the Mexican government promote irregular migration,” the Interior Ministry statement said.
But it added that Mexico considers the annual caravans “a public demonstration that seeks to call attention to the migration phenomenon and the importance of respecting the rights of Central Americans.” The U.S. government has been kept fully informed of the situation, it said.
The department also said that unlike in previous years of the caravan, “this time Mexican immigration authorities have offered refugee status” to participants who qualify. But it suggested it is not up to Mexico to keep people from going to the U.S. to apply for asylum’…..
More…