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- The group is preparing to leave Honduras on January 15 and make its way north
- Unlike previous caravans, the group plans to stop short of the US and find work in Mexico instead
- Meanwhile, migrants who arrived with the last large caravan in October are still waiting out the asylum-seeking process at overcrowded shelters in Tijuana
Another migrant caravan will soon be making its way north from Honduras with an estimated 15,000 people, according to new reports.
As the thousands of migrants who fled the Central American country in October remain stranded at the Mexico border waiting to enter the US, the even larger group is prepared is preparing to depart for the north on January 15.
‘They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan,’ Irma Garrido, a member of the migrant advocacy group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation, told the Los Angeles Times.
Garrido said the latest caravan will likely pick up even more people from El Salvador and Guatemala as it heads toward Mexico.
Like the last caravan, the group plans to share its progress, including which routes they will be taking, on social media, Mexican newspaper El Diario de Chiapas reported.
However, unlike previous groups, Garrido said that the members of this caravan are planning to stop short of the US and find work in Mexico, given that shelters in Tijuana are already overcrowded with migrants waiting to apply for asylum in San Diego.
The migrant with this fall’s largest caravan have been left suspended in uncertainty as they wait out the lengthy asylum-request process.
In October, the caravan was faced with a choice: continue to the US southern border or stop and put down roots in Mexico, where the government offered to let them stay.
Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group of 40 Mexican and US activists escorting the caravan, warned the migrants that the offer might be too good to be true and called a voice vote on whether to continue.
‘Let’s keep going!’ the crowd yelled amid applause.
Now thousands are stuck in the border town of Tijuana, where they are likely to be camped for months or longer with no easy way to get into the United States, creating what is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in this overwhelmed city plagued by protests.
While Trump administration has been clear that it will not welcome the immigrants, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pledged to provide work visas to migrants who fled violence and poverty in their home countries and came north in hopes of finding a better life.
In his inauguration speech at the beginning of the month, López Obrador promised to implement public works projects including the planting of 2 million trees as well as the construction of his $8billion Maya Train.
The train, which will link cities in the three Yucatan peninsula states as well as Tabasco and Chiapas, is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in Mexico’s southern states.
Mexico and the US agreed last week to develop a plan to curb Central American migration, which will include a $25billion investment from Mexico into its southern states over the next five years.
Under that plan, the US will contribute $4.8billion to Mexico and $5.8billion to the Northern Triangle of Central America, which consists of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
