Hundreds of migrants, mostly Hondurans, wait in Guatemalan territory, just a step away from the Mexican border, the arrival of between 1,000 and 1,500 more members of the first caravan of 2020 to make more strength and have a greater chance of success for Enter the Mexican town of Ciudad Hidalgo and continue forward with your goal: to reach the United States.
About 200 members of that convoy with thousands, which departed Wednesday from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, accepted the humanitarian visas offered by the Mexican government and entered that country.
However, a small group faced elements of the Mexican National Guard when they tried to enter Ciudad Hidalgo on their own, which led the authorities to close the fence to avoid a massive crossing of migrants who have not registered to receive those visas
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The Mexican government has said that migrants entering the country without registering will not be able to pass from the border area. But those seeking asylum or other protections may request and legalize their status.
Guatemalan officials had counted more than 4,000 migrants who registered at border crossings to enter that country since last Wednesday and there were additional migrants who did not register.
Sonia Eloina Hernández, mayor of Ciudad Hidalgo, said authorities expected a large number of migrants. "We're getting ready. We don't know exactly how many people will come," he said.
Around 148 migrants had crossed over to Ciudad Hidalgo in recent days and applied for asylum, said Hernández. At least 500 more were distributed around Tecun Uman waiting.
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At nightfall on Friday, migrants tried to sleep in the port on the side of Guatemala, with their heads resting on backpacks and children lying on their parents. Wet clothes hung on the fences. Others killed their time playing soccer on the banks of the Suchiate River.
"We have to wait to see what happens," said Tania Mejía, a 25-year-old Honduran mother. He had parked on the ground next to a tree at the entrance of the bridge with his six-year-old son and his three-year-old daughter.
Mejía wanted to be among the first to cross, but she was weighing that desire against the safety of her children and thinking that she could be left behind to see how things develop.
His memories are still fresh from the first two migrant caravans with which he traveled alone, one at the end of 2018 and another in the spring of 2019. He knew things could escalate if security forces tried to prevent migrants from entering Mexico . "They say that Mexicans will not allow the passage, but who knows?"
If necessary, Mejía said, he might have to cross the river as he did one of the previous times. His hope this time is not to reach the United States, but to northern Mexico. "I have a person in Mexicali who can give me a job, so I went looking for her," he said.
The bridge was not closed by Mexico this Friday until this Saturday's clash of a few undocumented Central Americans with the National Guard. Migrants who would like to cross and apply for asylum or try to regularize their status and find work could do so until that time.
But migrants distrusted a trap. Mexico's offer of legal status and 4,000 jobs, as President Andres Manuel López Obrador announced yesterday, carries a stipulation that would limit them to southern Mexico, where wages are lower and there are fewer jobs than in other parts of the country .
Hernandez, the mayor, said that Mexico is different since 2018 and early 2019, when massive caravans flowed across the border. He said that the Mexican government from the municipal to the federal level is coordinated and prepared.
And I expected more guards to arrive in Ciudad Hidalgo "so that people do not cross the river, so that whoever wants to enter Mexico, as our president says, is 'Welcome', but over the bridge."
In the capital of Guatemala, Mauro Verzzeletti, director of the local migrant shelter, said he expected between 1,000 and 1,500 people to go to bed there Friday night. Migrants planned to leave again on Saturday around 4 am
Meanwhile, the Guatemalan human rights defender's office said there were just over 1,000 migrants gathering at another point on the Mexican border to the north, in the Petén region, and there were reports that Mexican forces were gathering across the border.
In Ciudad Hidalgo, Francisco Garduño, commissioner of the National Immigration Institute of Mexico, emphasized that migrants trying to enter the country irregularly would not go further.
"They cannot enter because it would be a violation of the law," he told The Associated Press. He declined to talk in detail about border reinforcements, but said there were "enough" troops to keep things tidy.
Return to your country
The National Migration Institute of Guatemala said on Saturday that at least 400 Honduran migrants who integrated the caravans of people who left during the week to the United States have returned to their country, with support from the Guatemalan authorities, according to EFE.
It was the National Civil Police of Guatemala that supported Hondurans in land transfers to migrants who did not register the passage, which between both countries is free by an international agreement, but that asks citizens to register with their document ID.
Waiting for migrants to decide the ideal time to cross into Mexico, members of the National Guard continue to make constant tours in the informal steps of the Suchiate riverbank where illegal people and merchandise cross into Mexican territory.
In October 2018, thousands of migrants, mostly Central Americans, began to cross in Mexico caravan to reach the United States.
At the beginning of June 2019, and after several caravans, the United States and Mexico reached an immigration agreement that prevented the first country from imposing tariffs on all products coming from the second and that is now in question depending on the determination made by the Mexican authorities regarding this last convoy that is preparing to enter the country in the next few days and arrive in the United States.
That Trump administration's commitment to the AMLO government resulted in the Stay in Mexico program, which has returned to that country more than 56,000 asylum seekers, forced to wait there for weeks, months or years to know if they are allows to enter the United States.
In addition, Trump has closed safe country agreements with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, to return asylum seekers to these countries, regardless of their nationality. In addition, migrants are automatically rejected if, on their trip to the border, they do not request asylum before in one of those three countries.
Each year they could be emigrating an average of between 50,000 and 70,000 Hondurans, according to analysts, of which not everyone manages to reach the United States. Those who live in this country, and others who stay in Mexico or are in Spain and Italy, for example, represent the first economic source of Honduras.
Immigrants, with or without a passport, generate millions of dollars to their country, where poverty affects more than 60% of its 9.3 million inhabitants.
In 2019, immigrants deported from several countries, mostly from the U.S. and Mexico, exceeded 105,000, but the 1.5 million Hondurans residing abroad sent $ 5.4 billion in family remittances, which represent 20% of Honduras' gross domestic product (GDP).
Edited by Olga Luna and Pelayo Escandón with information from Telemundo News correspondent in Mexico Raúl Torres, Associated Press and EFE.
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