SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (AP) — Some 600 migrants hoping to achieve america set off in a caravan Saturday from the northern Honduran metropolis of San Pedro Sula.
Lots of of younger males, ladies and kids, most from Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba, had gathered in a single day and early morning on the metropolis’s central bus station.
Shortly after daybreak, they set out strolling towards the Guatemalan border in hopes that travelling in a bunch can be safer or cheaper than making an attempt to rent smugglers or making an attempt on their very own. A smaller second group quickly joined.
Fabricio Ordoñez, a younger Honduran laborer, mentioned he had joined the group in hopes of “giving a brand new life to my household.”
“The dream is to be in america to have the ability to do many issues in Honduras,” he mentioned, including he was pessimistic that left-leaning President-elect Xiomara Castro, who takes workplace on Jan. 27, would have the ability to shortly resolve the Central American nation’s financial and social issues after 12 years of conservative administrations stricken by scandal.
“They’ve looted the whole lot,” he mentioned. “It will be very exhausting for this authorities to enhance issues.”
Nicaraguan marcher Ubaldo López expressed hope that native officers wouldn’t attempt to hinder this group, as they’ve prior to now.
“We all know it is a very exhausting highway and we ask God and the Honduran authorities to please accompany us to the border with Guatemala and never put extra roadblocks,” he mentioned.
He mentioned he hoped that Guatemala and Mexico additionally would enable the group to go and that the U.S. authorities “will open the doorways to us” — regardless of repeated current examples of regional governments, typically below U.S. stress, making an attempt to halt such caravans.
Giant numbers of migrants, many from Central America and Haiti, have reached the U.S. border over the previous yr, making a headache for the administration of President Joe Biden.
After a number of hours of journey Saturday, some migrants managed to cross into Guatemala by unlawful border crossings, whereas a number of hundred had been caught on the Honduran facet of the border as a result of they didn’t have cash to pay the roughly $50 for a PCR take a look at for coronavirus demanded by authorities.
The final director of the Guatemalan Institute of Migration, Carlos Emilio Morales, mentioned “persons are being returned, the whole lot is so as, humanely.” He didn’t present additional particulars.
“We’re defending our borders, we’re defending the well being of all Guatemalans,” Morales mentioned.
In December, 56 migrants died when a truck carrying greater than 100 foreigners overturned on a freeway in southern Mexico.
The U.S. Border Patrol has mentioned it had greater than 1.6 million encounters with migrants alongside the Mexican border between September 2020 and the identical month in 2021 — greater than 4 occasions the overall of the earlier fiscal yr.
Biden has backed proposals for $7 billion in help to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in hopes improved financial situations will gradual migration.
On the finish of final yr, the U.S. authorities reactivated an immigration coverage that compelled asylum-seekers to attend in Mexico for his or her hearings. Mexico’s international ministry confirmed the reactivation of the U.S. program and mentioned it might briefly not return migrants to their international locations of origin for humanitarian causes.
The federal government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has indicated that Washington has accepted its humanitarian issues with this system, together with the necessity for “better sources for shelters and worldwide organizations, safety for weak teams, consideration of native safety situations” in addition to vaccines and anti-COVID-19 measures from migrants.
