TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — Mexican immigration authorities have broken up two small migrant caravans heading toward the U.S. border, activists said Saturday.
Some migrants were bused to cities in southern Mexico, and others were offered transit papers.
The move comes a week after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican products unless the country does more to stem the flow of migrants to the US border.
Trusted news and daily treats, straight to your inbox
See for yourself: The Yodel is the source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States. Sheinbaum wrote on her social media accounts the same day that “migrants and caravans are being accommodated before they reach the border.”
Migrant rights activist Luis García Villagrán said the breakup of the two caravans appeared to be part of “an agreement between the president of Mexico and the president of the United States.”
The first of the caravans left on November 5, the day Trump was elected, from the town of Tapachula in southern Mexico, near the border with Guatemala. At its peak it had about 2,500 people. In almost four weeks of walking it was approximately 430 kilometers to Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca.
In Tehuantepec, Mexican immigration officials offered the weary migrants free bus rides to other cities in southern or central Mexico.
“They took some of us to Acapulco, others to Morelia and others from our group to Oaxaca city,” said Bárbara Rodríguez, an opposition supporter who left her native Venezuela after that country’s disputed presidential election earlier this year.
Rodríguez said by phone that she later took a bus to Mexico City by herself.
In a statement Saturday, the National Immigration Institute said the migrants voluntarily accepted bus rides “to various areas where medical assistance is available and where their migration status will be assessed,” and said that “after accepting (the rides) they said they did not longer wanted to face the risks along the way.”
The second caravan of about 1,500 migrants left on November 20, reaching about 225 kilometers from the city of Tonala, Chiapas state. There the authorities offered a kind of transit visa that allows you to travel through Mexico for twenty days.
Sheinbaum has said she is confident a tariff war with the United States can be averted. But her statement — the day after she spoke on the phone with Trump — did not clarify who had offered what.
Apart from the much larger first caravans in 2018 and 2019 – which were provided with buses to travel part of the way north – no caravan has ever reached the US border walking or hitchhiking in a coherent manner, although some individual members did make it.
For years, migrant caravans were often blocked, harassed or prevented from hitching a ride by Mexican police and immigration agents. They have also often been arrested or returned to areas near the Guatemalan border.
___
Follow AP migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
