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(CNN Spanish) --
The flow of foreign irregular migrants arriving in Honduras and traveling on the migratory route in search of the American dream in the United States is increasing considerably, according to official figures.
According to statistics from the National Institute of Migration (INM), only in January of this year, 18,879 people of various nationalities entered Honduras irregularly.
The figure is almost 1,000% higher than that registered in the same month of 2022, which was 1,766 people.
Last month's number also exceeds that registered in the entire first quarter of 2022, which added 13,117 migrants.
In this context of enormous increase in people in transit, the Honduran government reported through the INM that it had set up a Temporary Care Center for Irregular Migrants in the city of Danlí, near the border area with Nicaragua.
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Víctor Hernández, who left Venezuela four months ago with his wife, three children and their pet, told CNN that they never found a place to sleep on the way.
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“We stayed on the street in tents;
Actually, it is the first country that I arrived and they mentioned to me that there is a refuge, that there is something where we can take refuge one day,'' Hernández said.
The shelter, which cares for 150 people per day, was inaugurated on January 16, although the authorities acknowledge that its capacity is insufficient to deal with the arrival of foreigners.
Eliza Ríos, from the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders, says that some of the migrants have to find other places to spend the night while they are in Honduras, because the shelter is not enough.
Migrants rest as they wait to board a bus that will take them to the Nicaragua-Honduras border in front of a bus terminal in Managua on October 20, 2022. (Photo by OSWALDO RIVAS/AFP) (Photo by OSWALDO RIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2021, according to official data, 17,590 irregular migrants from various countries entered Honduras.
In 2022, this number grew to 188,858 people.
According to what Fernando Oyagata, an Ecuadorian migrant, told CNN, most of these travelers sleep where the night surprises them.
“You see them from all over the world: Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and, above all, Haiti, you can see a lot, they sleep there in cardboard boxes in the terminals… But most of them stay there, sometimes on the Nicaraguan border itself, they stay on the highway,” Oyagata explained.
People also receive psychological and primary health care from Doctors Without Borders, an organization that also provides guidance on banks where they can withdraw money, shelters, and transportation, explained their representative Eliza Ríos.
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Although they are from different cultures, the motivations of migrants to come to the United States are the same: to have a better life for themselves and their families.
Venezuelan migrant Hanlet Ortega told CNN that he undertook the trip with his three daughters and that he left his country because he could not find a way to support and study his girls.
Fernando Oyagata pointed out that his mission is to fulfill the long-awaited American dream: "to reach the north, that is the motivation, to have another future, that would be what motivates us to continue forward," he said.
From January 1 to February 8 of this year, according to INM figures, the entry of irregular migrants already amounts to 25,094.
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