(Dolores Hidalgo) About 3,000 migrants from a dozen countries left southern Mexico on foot Sunday as they tried to reach the U.S. border.
Some members of the group said they hoped to reach the U.S. border before the November election because they fear that if Donald Trump wins, he will not follow through on his promise to close the border to asylum seekers.
“We run the risk that the permits (to cross the border) will be blocked,” lamented Miguel Salazar, a migrant from El Salvador.
He feared that a new Trump administration would stop granting appointments to migrants through CBP One, an app used by asylum seekers to enter the United States legally — by getting interviews at U.S. border crossings, where they present their documents to authorities.
The app only works once migrants reach Mexico City or Mexico’s northern states.
“Everyone wants to go down this road,” said Miguel Salazar, 37.
The group left Sunday from the southern Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo, which sits next to a river that marks the border between Mexico and Guatemala.
PHOTO JOSE TORRES, REUTERS
Families walking with their children
Some said they had been waiting for weeks in Ciudad Hidalgo for permits to travel to cities further north.
In recent years, migrants trying to cross through Mexico have organized in large groups to try to reduce the risk of being attacked by gangs or arrested by Mexican immigration agents during their journey.
But the caravans tend to disperse in southern Mexico as people grow tired of walking hundreds of miles.
Recently, Mexico has also made it more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. border by bus and train.
Travel permits are rarely granted to migrants who enter the country without a visa, and thousands have been stopped by immigration agents at checkpoints in central and northern Mexico and then bussed back to cities in the south of the 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 media.
He criticized Trump’s recent comments about migrants and how they are trying to “invade” the United States.
“We are not criminals,” he said. “We are hard-working people who left our country to advance in life, because in our country we suffer from many needs.”