At the height of Christmas, a caravan of thousands of migrants advances through southern Mexico towards the United States

Several thousand adults, minors and entire migrant families On Christmas Day they walked along the roads of southern Mexico with the hope that the Mexican authorities would allow them to reach the border with the United States.

The group, around 6,000 people of different nationalities but most were Central Americans, Venezuelans or Cubans, who left on Sunday from Tapachula, almost on the border with Guatemala, in what constitutes the largest caravan formed this year.

It takes place on the eve of the arrival in Mexico of a high-level US delegation to reach an agreement with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador new measures to control the growing flow of migrants through the region.

Honduran Mariela Amaya, who was traveling with her 7-year-old son, regretted that governments in neighboring countries try to tighten policies instead of helping them have a better life. “They don’t understand that we need to move forward.”

“Why can’t they help us, shake our hands? We need their support,” he said as he walked in the sweltering heat, almost dragging the child.

Local police and National Guard They followed the contingent without intervening. At one point, a family from the area was on the road to give away tamales and water.

The formation of these groups has been constant in recent years given the slow pace of immigration regulation processes in Tapachula and the lack of resources, decent life and work opportunities for foreigners to afford to wait for documents in that city.

Thousands and thousands

Previously, security forces had tried to block his way, but since the end of 2021 The authorities chose to let the migrants get tired of walking and they tried to break up the groups by offering them temporary documents which, in many cases, foreigners use to continue their journey north on their own.

“Everything that revolves around migration It’s an electoral question both for the United States and for Mexico,” denounced Monday the activist Luis García Villagrán, who accompanied the group and tried to pressure the authorities to provide them with the documents. “Yes, there is a budget,” he assured. “We ask to be assisted and the problem is over.”

The region is experiencing an influx of migrants Without precedents which could not be controlled despite attempts by the United States to open new channels for legal emigration, while worsening the consequences of irregular immigration.

But although asylum processing points have been installed in South and Central America, many migrants say they are unaware of these procedures. This is why they undertake the migratory route.

Venezuelan Jessica García is one of them. García said that when she was in Venezuela she tried to open the application launched by US authorities, called CBPOne, to register as an asylum seeker, but she was unable to do so. I didn’t know you can only get into that program from central or northern Mexico. Nor had I heard of places to do management.

“This journey was very hard for us migrants – says the young woman who was traveling with six members of her family, sad to have to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas walking – We need the help of immigration and the government to get back on track. sixth”. place your hand on her heart and give us safe passage,” she added.

More than half a million migrants, many of them Venezuelans, have crossed the Darién jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama this year. Mexico detected more than 680,000 foreigners in an irregular situation from January to November, all according to official data. Additionally, a record number of nearly 137,000 people have sought refuge in this country.

The situation worsened in December at the Mexico-US border, when US authorities recorded a few days up to 10,000 illegal crossings per day, a completely unusual figure, which forced the authorities of that country to close a couple of railway crossings for a few days to transfer border control personnel and made Mexico pay the economic costs of the closures.

After a conversation between President Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the head of the White House decided to send the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and the National Security Advisor to Mexico of the Chamber, Blanca. Liz Sherwood-Randall, to agree with the Mexican president on new measures on immigration.

According to López Obrador, the visit is scheduled for Wednesday.

In early December, the National Migration Institute ordered the temporary suspension of various migrant transfer and return operations due to lack of budget, and the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance suspended service in its offices until January due to the holiday period, which encouraged many migrants to join the caravan.

López Obrador recognized that the Americans They want Mexico to do more to block migrants heading southon the border with Guatemala, and to make it difficult for them to pass through the country, but he said it is not just about containment but also about increasing development cooperation and solving “political problems” in countries like Cuba or Venezuela that encourage migration.

AP Agency