For the third time this year, a group of Central Americans and Cubans is organizing a migrant caravan from the southern border to cross the country by bus and reach central or northern Mexico.
The caravan departed this Saturday from Bicentennial Park in Tapachula, Chiapas, and consists of approximately 200 people, primarily from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, and Cuba, who are traveling along the state’s coastal highway.
The migrants say there is a significant backlog in the asylum application process in Mexico, which prevents them from obtaining work permits.
They are hoping to reach Mexico City or Monterrey, where the 2026 FIFA World Cup is currently being held. Others are considering crossing the northern border back into the United States.
Since Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency in 2015 and implemented a hardline immigration policy, the flow of undocumented migrants at Mexico’s northern border has decreased considerably.
But several migrants were transferred to Tapachula by the Mexican government, which also reinforced immigration enforcement to avoid the imposition of tariffs by the United States.
However, the office of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) in Tapachula reports backlogs and an overload of applications, delaying the processing of requests for up to two years. For this reason, civil society organizations estimate that around 60,000 foreign nationals are stranded in that city in vulnerable conditions.
This new migrant caravan calls itself “In God’s Hands” and is made up of women, men, and children. It is the third caravan registered in 2016, following two previous marches in March and April that were dispersed in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.
So far, no caravan as large as the one in 2018 has been achieved, which aggravated the migration crisis, fueled by the poverty and violence faced by hundreds of people in Latin America.
Source: politica.expansion
