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The migratory crisis worsened in Mexico after the departure of a new caravan on Thursday from Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala, while a first contingent, still only made up of hundreds of people, advanced through the eastern state of Veracruz.
Some 3,000 migrants, mostly Central Americans and Haitians, left in a new migrant caravan from Tapachula, in the southeastern state of Chiapas.
Their destination is Mexico City, where they will seek to regularize their migratory situation, although they do not rule out heading directly to the northern border, as was recently announced by the contingent that left Tapachula almost a month ago and is now in the eastern state of Veracruz.
This large group of migrants is largely made up of families and left Tapachula early in the morning, in anticipation of the high temperatures and humidity that plague the region.
Prior to their departure, they prayed to God and asked the authorities to allow them to advance without problems.
The spokesperson for this new caravan, activist Luis Rey García Villagrán, affirmed that the contingent is open to dialogue.
But he asked the Mexican Government, specifically the National Institute of Migration (INM), to guarantee that the visitor’s cards for humanitarian reasons that have been given in the last weeks to several hundreds of foreigners who were part of the contingent that today is in Veracruz are valid for the whole territory.
The activist added that there are about 14 nationalities that have undertaken this caravan and expects that more migrants may join in their journey through the state of Chiapas.
Johny is one of the estimated 3,000 Haitian migrants who have joined this new caravan.
“They tell me that we are going to walk about 1,000 kilometers to reach our destination, which is the United States,” he told EFE news agency, adding that he hopes they will soon reach a place where he can find work and settle down.
Josué Ignacio, a Honduran migrant, undertook the journey in the caravan alleging that the migration authorities do not resolve his situation.
“I was already with my family, we arranged papers and cards and migration itself took care of taking that away from us. We had a one-year permit, we were working in Monterrey and we wanted to visit family in another state and they took away our permit,” he said.
This migrant caravan advanced 11 kilometers to the first immigration checkpoint where they passed freely despite the presence of the National Guard and officials.
They finally arrived in the municipality of Huehuetán.
The dangers and the fatigue of the journey of the migrant caravan
Meanwhile, this Thursday the caravan that in the last few hours arrived in the eastern state of Veracruz is advancing on foot from the town of Jesús Carranza towards the north of this region, one of the most dangerous in the country.
They did this the same way they did on Wednesday, guarded by security forces and also supported by medical corps.
According to the Government of Veracruz itself, this caravan, which at the beginning gathered about 5,000 people, now consists of about 300 people.
And this same Thursday, another 50 migrants left the group and arrived at the port of Veracruz after joining the regularization program of the INM.
The fatigue after 500 kilometers has taken its toll on them -there are many families with children- and for this reason, many have joined the INM’s proposal to regularize their stay and leave the contingent.
The waves of migration intensify
These two migrant caravans advance as the region experiences a record migratory flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “found” more than 1.7 million illegal immigrants on the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended September 30th.
The groups have been set in motion after the Mexican authorities frustrated the advance of four migrant caravans that left precisely from Tapachula in the first days of September.
Mexico has detected more than 190,000 undocumented migrants from January to September, nearly triple the number in 2020, in addition to having deported nearly 74,300, according to the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior.
As an example of this migratory wave, just this Wednesday the INM reported the discovery of 195 foreign people crowded together, without food or water, in rooms of a hotel located in the municipality of Apodaca, in the northern state of Nuevo León.
