EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Two new migrant caravans are making their way north from southern Mexico and a third is expected to set off from Guatemala on May 31, according to reports.
A column of between 1,000 and 1,200 families and individuals from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela and Haiti on Wednesday arrived in the city of Puebla, about 90 miles southeast of Mexico City.
Videos posted on social media and news websites show a multitude walking on streets amid traffic carrying backpacks, wooden crosses and pushing strollers. Most wear hats or baseball caps; some carry umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. Some news outlets are calling this the “Migrant Children’s Caravan.”
The priest at the Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos parish in the city of Puebla is expecting to host many of the migrants and is calling on residents to donate food, fruit, bottled water, shoes and clothes for caravan members.
A Honduran migrant named Hernan told Mexican media he is traveling with his wife and daughter “to get a job and give them a better life” in the United States. The family has been on the road on and off for three months, at times getting rides from motorists passing by and surviving on strangers sharing water and food.
A second caravan of about 200 people on Monday left Tapachula near the Mexico-Guatemala border. This group includes Cubans, Brazilians, Colombians and Haitians, Mexican media reported. A third caravan is being organized in Tecun Uman and is scheduled to cross the Suchiate River into Mexico on May 31.
Migrants step off a raft coming from Guatemala to the Mexican side of the Suchiate river in Chiapas, Mexico.
The news portal Milenio says groups of 50 or more migrants already are leaving Tapachula every week, with possibly another caravan of 1,000-plus migrants preparing to set off this coming weekend.
The mass movement of people toward the U.S. border elicits strong emotions from American politicians who liken the situation to an “open border.”
But Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, says international citizens have a legal right to flee their country and ask for refuge somewhere else.
“If someone is fleeing violence and persecution and they’re afraid for their lives, they should present themselves to any country to apply for asylum. That is a legal right,” Garcia said. “It is true that not everybody who is coming in these caravans may have grounds for asylum. But the fact is they don’t have any other means to apply for a worker’s visa or family reunification. We have a broken immigration system.”
Garcia says the U.S. needs foreign workers given the labor shortages across many industries. But unless Congress provides a framework to match American businesses’ need for workers with those foreign nationals vehemently offering to provide it, people will continue showing up at the border because that is the only option they have, he said.
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