TAPACHULA (AP) – Mexican immigration authorities have broken up two small migrant caravans headed to the United States (US) border, activists said.
Some migrants were bused to cities in southern Mexico, and others were offered transit papers.
The action comes a week after US President-elect Donald Trump threatened to slap 25 per cent tariffs on Mexican products unless the country does more to stem the flow of migrants to the US border.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had agreed to stop unauthorised migration across the border into the US. Sheinbaum wrote on her social media accounts the same day that “migrants and caravans are taken care of before they reach the border”.
Migrant rights activist Luis García Villagrán said the breaking-up of the two caravans appeared to be part of “an agreement between the president of Mexico and the president of the US.”
The first of the caravans started out from the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, on November 5, the day Trump was elected. At its height it had about 2,500 people. In almost four weeks of walking, it had gone about 430 kilometres to Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca.
In Tehuantepec, Mexican immigration officials offered the tired migrants free bus rides to other cities in southern or central Mexico.
“They took some of us to Acapulco, others to Morelia, and others from our group to Oaxaca city,” said Bárbara Rodríguez, an opposition supporter who left her native Venezuela after that country’s contested presidential elections earlier this year.
Rodríguez said by telephone she later caught a bus on her own to Mexico City.
In a statement, the National Immigration Institute said the migrants voluntary accepted bus rides “to various areas where there is medical assistance and where their migratory status will be reviewed”, and said “upon accepting (the rides), they said they no longer wanted to face the risks along their way”.The second caravan of about 1,500 migrants set out on November 20 and made it about 225 kilometres to the town of Tonala, in Chiapas state. There, authorities offered a sort of transit visa that allows travel across Mexico for 20 days.
Sheinbaum has said she is confident that a tariff war with the US can be averted. But her statement – the day after she held a phone call with Trump – did not make clear who had offered what.
Apart from the much larger first caravans in 2018 and 2019 – which were provided buses to ride part of the way north – no caravan has ever reached the US border walking or hitchhiking in any cohesive way, though some individual members have made it.
