Q24N (VOA) A new group of about 1,500 migrants left southern Mexico on Wednesday with the intention of reaching the United States before Donald Trump assumes the presidency on January 20, according to its members.
They fear that after that date, legal options for migration will close and mass deportations will begin.
This is the sixth caravan to leave Chiapas, a state bordering Guatemala, in less than two months, including two that left on the day of the US elections. They all dissolve shortly after their departure, but that does not prevent the next one from being organized again.
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These are some keys to understanding this phenomenon. Why do caravans form?
In Tapachula, the city known as the capital of Mexico’s southern border, many migrants who enter Mexico illegally gather. Many try to regularize their situation in that city or request an asylum appointment in the United States with the CBPOne application.
Since the procedures are slow, there is no work and insecurity has grown a lot in Chiapas, migrants are desperate. So, when they hear about the option of moving in a group, they choose to walk in the hope that further north they will have a better chance of moving towards the United States.
In addition, many feel safer traveling in groups and believe that this way they can avoid being victims of threats, extortion, kidnappings and abuses by members of organized crime and corrupt authorities.
Why have there been more in recent months?
Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant speech during the US election campaign and the offers he has made as president-elect about mass deportations and even about closing the border have alarmed many migrants.
They also fear that Trump will end the main legal route to the United States, the CBPOne online dating app, through which almost 1 million people have entered the country since January 2023 to request asylum.
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Many of the people who want to opt for this route, which offers appointments for 1,450 migrants a day, trust that if they are further north it will be easier to get to the border when their appointment comes up and that is why they joined the caravans.
“We are going with the hope that we get an appointment quickly so we can cross before he (Trump) becomes president,” explained Venezuelan Yotzeli Peña, 23, one of the members of the most recent caravan on Wednesday.
How do they organize?
Its members organize themselves through social networks, WhatsApp chats, Facebook or, now also, TikTok, which makes it difficult to know who is the architect of each call.
At first, they were more spontaneous. Then, they have been encouraged by activists and many usually coincide with important dates in which migration is on the agenda, with the aim of raising awareness about the situation and the dangers faced by thousands of foreigners who cross Mexico.
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However, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced on several occasions that the caravans had political objectives and various civil organizations warned that migrant traffickers can profit from them and deceive their members.
How far do the caravans reach?
The only ones that reached the border with the United States were the first ones, which left Honduras and took place at the end of 2018 and at the beginning of 2019, coinciding with the start of the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In October 2020, on the eve of the elections in which Trump tried to be re-elected against Joe Biden, a caravan was also formed that left Honduras and reached more than 3,000 people, but was blocked and dissolved by Guatemalan security forces.
The most recent ones have been organized in southern Mexico and have dissolved before leaving the south, including one of 5,000 people in October 2023.
Generally, Mexican authorities let them advance for days, until their members – often entire families with children – end up exhausted. This is what Emilio Luna, a member of the Documentation Network of Migrant Defense Organizations in Mexico, called a practice of “disarticulation.”
Authorities usually transfer migrants to different points. The objective, they say, is to take them to less congested places, where their procedures are more agile, but civil organizations denounce that they leave them helpless and at the mercy of the cartels.
Are there more migrants trying to reach the US?
It does not mean that there are more migrants trying to reach the United States, because they are two different things. The caravans are only a very small part of the thousands of migrants trying to reach the United States, but they are very visible. The largest flows cross Mexico unseen, with the help of traffickers; a booming business for organized crime groups.
This year, the number of arrivals at the US border has dropped significantly.
According to data from US authorities, arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico in September were at their lowest point in the last four years.
This was partly due to the launch of the CBPOne platform, but they have also remained low at crossings through Darien, the jungle that separates Colombia from Panama.
According to the Panamanian National Immigration Service, almost 300,000 migrants have crossed so far this year, 39% less than in the same period in 2023.
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