A caravan of 3,000 migrants traveling through Mexico hoping to reach the United States shrunk to roughly half its original size on Thursday. Many of them are not sure about their prospects after the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections.
Photo: SITA/AP, Moises Castillo
Migrants who are part of a caravan headed for the country’s northern border and eventually the United States rest on the outskirts of Escuintla, southern Mexico, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024.
In his campaign, Trump promised large-scale deportations of undocumented migrants and the reintroduction of expedited deportations to Mexico. Reuters writes about it.
The caravan has shrunk from 3,000 people that set out from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on Tuesday to fewer than 1,600 people, an official at Mexico’s National Migration Institute said. According to him, only a little more than 100 people asked the authorities for help to return to Tapachula. It is not clear where the other migrants who left the caravan went.
After learning of Trump’s victory, many refugees felt that their hope for a new life in the United States had diminished.
“I was hoping she (Kamala Harris) would win, but it didn’t happen,” said Valerie Andrade, a Venezuelan traveling from Chiapas to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Like more than seven million other Venezuelans, Anrade, along with her husband, left her crisis-ridden country in search of better prospects.
Part of the migration policy that Trump wants to implement is also the cancellation of the right to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants who were born in the US. Trump’s previous administration from 2017 to 2021 pushed through policies that left hundreds of thousands of migrants stranded in camps along the Mexican border.
A spokesman for the Chiapas state security service told Reuters that while the caravan continued its journey north, some families had decided to return to Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. However, for many, the journey to the US border is not over.
Jeilimar, a migrant from Venezuela, hopes to make an appointment to apply for asylum through the federal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) application before Trump takes office. “With God’s help, I will be able to get the appointment,” said Jeilimar, who is traveling with her six-year-old daughter.
Human rights activists say migrants will continue to arrive at the US southern border. “People will look for a new way. It will be more dangerous, but it won’t stop them,” said Heyman Vázquez, a Catholic priest and migrant rights activist.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
