CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — About 3,000 migrants from about a dozen countries set out on foot from Mexico’s southern border on Sunday as they tried to reach the U.S. border.
Some of the group’s members said they hope to reach the U.S. border before elections are held in November because they fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will make good on his promise to close the border to asylum seekers.
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“We run the risk that permits (to cross the border) will be blocked,” said Miguel Salazar, a migrant from El Salvador. He feared that a new Trump administration could stop granting appointments to migrants through CBP One, an app used by asylum seekers to enter the US legally – getting appointments at US border crossings, where they present their cases to authorities.
The app only works when migrants arrive in Mexico City or states in northern Mexico.
“Everyone wants to use this path,” said Salazar, 37.
The group left on Sunday from the southern Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo, which is close to a river that marks Mexico’s border with Guatemala.
Some said they had been waiting for weeks in Ciudad Hidalgo for permits to travel to cities further north.
Migrants trying to pass through Mexico in recent years have organized large groups to try to reduce the risk of being attacked by gangs or detained by Mexican immigration authorities while traveling. But caravans tend to disperse in southern Mexico as people tire of walking hundreds of miles.
Recently, Mexico also made it more difficult for migrants to reach the US border on buses and trains.
Travel permits are rarely granted to migrants entering the country without a visa, and thousands of migrants have been detained by immigration agents at checkpoints in central and northern Mexico and transported by bus back to cities in the south of the country.
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Oswaldo Reyna, a 55-year-old Cuban migrant, crossed from Guatemala to Mexico 45 days ago and waited in Ciudad Hidalgo to join the new caravan announced on social media.
He criticized Trump’s recent comments about migrants and how they are trying to “invade” the United States.
“We are not delinquents,” he said. “We are hardworking people who left our country to progress in life, because in our homeland we suffer many needs.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
