Caravan with 3,000 migrants leaves southern Mexico toward the US border

Migrants from different Central American countries decided to begin their journey towards the United States border, with the aim of arriving before November, when the elections are held, since they fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will fulfill his promise to close the borders to asylum seekers.

There are around 3,000 migrants who have already left from southern Mexico in Chiapas, to begin their long journey to the United States with the hope of having a better life than what their countries offer them.

They fear that Trump will keep his promise

Some of the group’s members told The Associated Press that they hoped to reach the United States before the Nov. 5 election because they fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will make good on his promise to close the border to asylum seekers.

“We run the risk of having our permits blocked (to cross the border),” Miguel Salazar, a migrant from El Salvador, told the AP. They are worried that a new Trump administration will stop granting appointments to migrants through CBP One.

CBP Ones is an app used by asylum seekers to legally enter the United States, obtaining appointments at U.S. border posts, where they present their cases to officials.

The application only works in CDMX and northern cities

The app only works once migrants reach Mexico City or the northern states of Mexico.

“Everyone wants to use that route,” Salazar, 37, told the same news agency.

The group set out Sunday from the southern Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo, which sits on a river that marks Mexico’s border with Guatemala.

Some said they had been waiting for weeks in Ciudad Hidalgo for permits to travel to towns further north.

They seek to go in large groups

In recent years, migrants trying to pass through Mexico have organized into large groups to try to reduce the risk of being attacked by criminal gangs or detained by Mexican immigration officials during the journey.

But caravans tend to disperse in southern Mexico, as people eventually tire of walking hundreds of miles. It should be noted that Mexico has made it difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. border by bus and train.

Travel permits are rarely granted to migrants who enter the country without visas, and thousands of migrants have been detained by immigration officials at checkpoints in central and northern Mexico and bused back to cities in the south of the country.

Oswaldo Reyna, a 55-year-old Cuban migrant, crossed from Guatemala into Mexico 45 days ago and waited in Ciudad Hidalgo to join the new caravan announced on social media.

“We are not criminals”

He criticized Trump’s recent comments about migrants, saying they are trying to “invade” the United States.

“We are not criminals,” he said. “We are hard-working people who left their country to get ahead in life, because in our country we are suffering from many hardships,” he stressed.

With information from AP

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