CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — About 3,000 migrants from about a dozen countries left Mexico’s southern border on foot on Sunday, attempting to reach the border with the United States.
Some of the group’s members said they hoped to reach the U.S. border before the November election because they fear that if Donald Trump wins he will keep a promise close the border to asylum seekers.
“We run the risk of having our permits blocked (to cross the border),” said Miguel Salazar, a migrant from El Salvador. He feared that a new Trump administration could stop granting appointments to immigrants through CBP onean application used by asylum seekers to enter the United States legally, obtaining appointments at US border posts, where they present their cases to officials.
The app only works once migrants arrive in Mexico City or the northern states of Mexico.
“Everyone wants to use that route,” said Salazar, 37.
The group left on Sunday from the southern Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo, which sits along a river that marks Mexico’s border with Guatemala.
Some said they had been waiting in Ciudad Hidalgo for weeks for permits to travel to towns 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 officials while traveling. But caravans tend to disperse in southern Mexico when people get tired of walking hundreds of miles.
Recently, Mexico also made it harder for migrants to reach the United States border on buses and trains.
Travel permits are rarely granted to immigrants who enter the country without visas, and thousands of immigrants have been detained by immigration officials at checkpoints in central and northern Mexico and transported by buses back to cities in southern Mexico. country.
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 networks.
He criticized Trump’s recent comments about immigrants and how they are trying to “invade” the United States.
“We are not criminals,” he said. “We are hard-working people who have left our country to get ahead in life, because in our homeland we are suffering from many needs.”
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