RELATED PRESS
Migrants who had been waiting for transitory transit documents were unable to download them after waiting, some for up to two months, are leaving Tapachula, Mexico, for the U. S. border. Migrants said they no longer had the resources to pay for food and shelter and wait. more extensive.
RELATED PRESS
Migrants who had been waiting for transitory transit documents were unable to download them after waiting, some for up to two months, are leaving Tapachula, Mexico, for the U. S. border. Migrants said they no longer had the resources to pay for food and shelter and wait. more extensive.
TAPACHULA, Mexico >> About 5,000 migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti set off on foot Monday from Mexico’s southern border heading north to the United States.
Migrants have complained that processing refugee or exit visa programs takes too long at Mexico’s main immigrant processing center, located in the city of Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. In Mexico’s battered immigration system, other people seeking these types of visas wait weeks or months. , unable to work.
On Monday, migrants formed a long line along the highway, escorted by police. The police are there regularly to prevent them from blocking the entire road and to prevent them from hitchhiking.
Monday’s march is one of the largest since June 2022. The migrant caravans of 2018 and 2019 have attracted much more attention. But with as many as 10,000 migrants popping up at the U. S. border in recent weeks, Monday’s march is now just a drop in the ocean.
“We’ve been traveling for about 3 months and we’re going to keep going,” said Daniel Gonzalez, from Venezuela. “In Tapachula, no one is helping us. “
Returning to Venezuela is an option, he said, because the economic scenario there is worsening.
In the past, he explained, Mexico’s tactic has largely been to wait until protesters are tired and then offer to take them back to their home countries or to smaller treatment centers of choice.
Irineo Mujica, one of the organizers of the march, said migrants are forced to live on the streets in miserable situations in Tapachula. They ask for transit visas that allow them to cross into Mexico and reach the U. S. border.
“We are here to save lives with these types of actions,” Mujica said. “They (authorities) ignored the challenge and left the migrants stranded. “
The image of 45-year-old Honduran migrant Leonel Olveras is a typical example of the plight of protesters.
“They don’t hand out papers here,” Olveras said of Tapachula. They ask us to wait months. It’s too much. “
Mujica later wrote in a message that the organization had only traveled about 14 kilometers and stopped for the night in the city of Álvaro Obregón. She wrote that the organization plans to go further in the coming days, but that the number of women and young people will have to be taken into account.
The U. S. southwest border is struggling to cope with an increasing number of migrants from South America who are temporarily crossing the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama before heading north. As of September, 420,000 migrants, aided by Colombian smugglers, had crossed the gap since the beginning of the year, according to Panamanian figures.
Have comments? Learn more here.
Click here for our full information on the coronavirus outbreak. Submit your coronavirus news.
Back to top