Migrant caravan advances to Mexico City on its way to the US

Migrants leave in a caravan this Saturday from the city of Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas (Mexico).

The first migrant caravan of the presidency of Claudia Sheinbaum, who assumed power on October 1, left this Saturday from the southern border of the country towards Mexico City, with the undocumented people demanding a new immigration policy after the massacre of six people from Egypt, Peru and El Salvador committed by the Army.

The mobilization, made up of hundreds of migrants, left this Saturday morning from the city of Tapachula, state of Chiapas, with the Mexican capital as its first destination and will seek to advance to the northern border, to reach the United States, without being accompanied by any organization or civil society activists.

The migrant caravan is the first after the first days of the government of President Sheinbaum, to whom the migrants ask for a “humane, sensitive border, free transit and greater security in the face of the presence of organized crime.”

“The federal, state and municipal governments will provide support to this caravan with public security and civil protection agents, as well as paramedics, with the goal of ensuring that they have a peaceful exit from our municipality,” said the Secretary of Civil Protection of Tapachula, Luis Demetrio Martínez, prior to the departure of the caravan from the central park Miguel Hidalgo.

This group of undocumented people from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Central America, Haiti and African countries, before their departure, knelt down and prayed to ask for a safe path and for the Mexican authorities to allow them to advance to their destination.

“More humane” immigration policy

The Venezuelan migrant, Maryoris Blanco, who is walking with her family, said she was confident that the president of Mexico has good job offers, but a “more humane” immigration policy is required and that migrants be included because they seek free transit to reach the northern border with the United States.

“They really see us sometimes as invaders, but we are not invaders, we are a country that is in a very bad situation: Venezuela and now it is going to get worse, that is what we ask for, to be more humane, more sensitive, to get us some kind of document and to leave us alone,” he told EFE.

Meanwhile, the migrant from Colombia, Rodrigo Álvarez, told EFE that many, like him, go with the intention of looking for families who are in the United States, and decided to leave Tapachula because they have spent enough time and they are running out of money.

“We all join together to come with greater security, because in small groups we are all abused by the Mexican population, we ask President Sheinbaum to support us with security so that we are not abused by so much violence,” he said.

The mass exodus of migrants occurs four days after the Mexican Army revealed that last Tuesday, the day Sheinbaum took power, two soldiers killed six migrants of Egyptian, Salvadoran and Peruvian nationality after mistaking them for criminals while they were traveling in two vehicles on a stretch between Villa Comaltitlán and Huixtla, municipalities of Chiapas.

On Friday, Sheinbaum admitted during her morning conference the existence of a strategy to stop the arrival of migrants to Mexico and prevent their crossing into the United States, which includes repatriation flights to the countries of origin.

During the government of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024), the role of the Armed Forces in security tasks in the country was increased, where 36,000 agents had immigration tasks in September.

The number of daily migrant detentions at the US border has fallen by 66% from December to September, according to the Mexican government, but irregular migration through Mexico rose by 193% year-on-year in the first half of the year to more than 712,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.

Source: EFE

TAPACHULA (MEXICO),
Migrants leave the city of Tapachula in a caravan this Saturday, in the state of Chiapas (Mexico). EFE/Juan Manuel Blanco