A group of roughly 1,200 migrants has begun the long march from Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala in hopes of reaching Mexico’s capital city. The group has made clear they are hoping to receive asylum status in Mexico City and deny any intention of heading to the United States.
A Spanish-language report in Agencia EFE, the leading Spanish-language news agency, described the group as consisting of hundreds of Cubans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and Haitians. The intention of the group, according to EFE, was to seek better employment opportunities than those found along the southern border of Mexico in the state of Chiapas.
EFE spoke to one member of the caravan, Yovani de Jesus, a Venezuelan citizen who says the group left in mass on Wednesday from the border city of Tapachula, near Guatemala, to protest Mexican government officials who have failed to grant the members legal status. Yovani says she has been in Mexico for more than seven months and is still in an illegal status. Yovani told EFE that the refugee agency in Mexico, known by the acronym COMAR has not taken any steps to grant her request for refugee status in Mexico.
Without the documents required to demonstrate legal refugee status in Mexico, Yovani says she cannot work in factories or shops and is ineligible for social security benefits from the Mexican government. A lack of legal status also creates a situation that allows employers to exploit the migrants’ labor.
According to EFE, the illegal immigration status in Mexico also increases the level of vulnerability that exposes them to the potential for violent situations, assaults, fraudulent schemes, and limited access to medical services.
The migrants are now avoiding border cities in the north and south of Mexico, such as Tijuana and Tapachula, and are opting to head to Mexico City as their preferred destination instead of moving along the traditional route that ends in multiple destinations across the United States.
Immediately upon taking office, President Trump pushed to discontinue programs such as CBP-One that allowed 1,400 migrants to enter the United States illegally each day at land border ports for the purpose of making an asylum claim. In addition, another parole program implemented under the Biden administration, known as the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) program, which allowed 1,000 migrants daily from those countries to enter through airports in the United States, was also cancelled.
As reported by Breitbart Texas, President Trump’s strict border policies and a ramping up of interior deportation operations conducted by ICE and other federal agencies have dropped illegal border crossings to a record low level not seen since 1970.
Historical Border Patrol records show the agency arrested 201,780 illegal aliens along the southwest border in 1970 and 263,991 in 1971. This year’s apprehension, with most monthly totals occurring within the fiscal year attributable to the Trump administration, will fall less than the 1971 total by a wide margin, a source within DHS told Breitbart Texas.
According to CBP, the agency has completed a four-month period ending in September, during which no illegal aliens were released into the United States to pursue asylum claims, in comparison to days under the Biden administration that saw the release of thousands daily. So long as the strict border posture continues, migrant caravans will likely choose to remain hundreds of miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Before his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @RandyClarkBBTX.
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