On Sunday, a massive caravan of migrants from Central America, Venezuela, Cuba, and other nations passed through Mexico on its way to the United States. The parade took place only days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken comes in Mexico City to negotiate new accords to curb the influx of migrants wanting to enter the United States.
The caravan, believed to number approximately 6,000 individuals, many of whom are families with young children, is the largest in more over a year, indicating that collaborative attempts to dissuade migration by the Biden administration and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government are falling short.
The caravan left from Tapachula, near the country’s southern border with Guatemala, on Christmas Eve. In what appeared to be a rerun of previous strategies, officials waited for the marchers to wear out before offering them a type of temporary legal status that many utilize to continue their trip northward.
“We’ve been waiting here for three or four months without getting an answer,” said Cristian Rivera, who was traveling alone after leaving his wife and kid in Honduras. “Hopefully with this march there will be a change and we can get the permission we need to head north.”
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López Obrador promised in May to accept migrants from nations like as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
However, that agreement, which was intended to control a post-pandemic increase in migration, appears to be insufficient as the number of migrants once again swells, affecting bilateral commerce and fueling anti-migrant sentiment among conservative voters in the United States.
This month, up to 10,000 migrants were apprehended every day at the US-Mexico border. Meanwhile, US Customs and Border Protection was forced to halt cross-border rail activity in the Texas communities of Eagle Pass and El Paso due to migrants riding atop freight trains.
Arrests for illegal border crossings surpassed 2 million in each of the past two fiscal years, reflecting technical advances that have made it simpler for migrants to flee their homes to escape poverty, natural catastrophes, political persecution, and organized crime.
On Friday, López Obrador indicated he was eager to negotiate with the US again to solve migration issues. But he also encouraged the Biden administration to loosen restrictions on leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela — home to approximately 20% of the 617,865 migrants detected in the United States in October and November — and to give more money to poor nations in Latin America and beyond.
“That is what we are going to discuss, it is not just contention,” López Obrador said at a news conference Friday, following a phone call with President Joe Biden the day before to prepare for the high-level US delegation.
The US team, which will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday, will also include Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
However, Mexico’s capacity to aid the United States may be restricted. Due to a shortage of funding, the government discontinued a program to repatriate and relocate migrants within Mexico in December. So far this year, Mexico has detained almost 680,000 illegal migrants, while the number of foreigners requesting refuge in the nation has reached a record 137,000.
The convoy on Sunday was the biggest since June 2022, when Biden welcomed leaders in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas. Another march left Mexico in October, coinciding with López Obrador’s gathering with regional leaders to resolve the migrant situation. A month later, 3,000 migrants clogged the major border crossing for more than 30 hours.
