translated from Spanish: New migrant caravan is set to depart from Honduras to US

Dozens of people gathered on Tuesday at the San Pedro Sula bus terminal in Honduras, following the call for a new migrant caravan. The call was made through social networks, especially WhatsApp groups. The goal of the congregates is to leave in the early hours of Wednesday, the 15th, bound for the United States.
It is the first caravan to be convened since, last April, some 400 people were arrested by agents of the National Migration Institute (INM) in the vicinity of Pijijiapan, Chiapas.
Animal Político wanted to know if the National Migration Institute (INM) plans any plan before the possible arrival of the caravan to the southern border, but sources of the institution declined to make statements.
Nor have the governments of Honduras and Guatemala, countries that have to cross before arriving in Mexico, have made statements.
Find out: What happened to the migrants who arrived in Mexico a year ago in the caravan?
Migrant caravans became popular in October 2018 when thousands of people (at least 7,000 in the first, according to Suchiate’s municipal authorities) crossed Mexico to the northern border, specifically Tijuana, Baja California.
Between October and November of that year, four caravans with migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador crossed the country to the United States. Some of its members jumped the fence to seek asylum, others returned to their home countries and a third group managed to work and settled in Mexico.
Mexico’s response to the Central American exodus was different from occasion. In October 2018, with Enrique Peña Nieto still in the presidency, before the Federal Police blocked the passage on the Rodolfo Robles bridge, which joins Mexico with Guatemala. Migrants evaded the barrier across the Suchiate River. From then on, the agents did not prevent them from transiting.
The coming to power of Andrés Manuel López Obrador was interpreted as a hope by migrants and collective human rights defenders. On January 15, 2019, another caravan departed from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Arriving at the Rodolfo Robles Bridge, its members encountered a deployment of the INM that offered regularization to all its members. The program lasted just ten days, from January 18 to 28, but allowed more than 13,000 Central Americans to obtain a resident card for humanitarian reasons.
This shift in immigration policy angered U.S. President Donald Trump, who began to deliver threatening messages against Lopez Obrador. At the same time, the “Remain in Mexico” program began at the northern border, whereby asylum seekers in the United States were forced to wait in Mexico for their appointment with the judge. Nearly 60,000 asylum seekers were returned during 2019.
From then on there a turn was recorded in the Mexican government’s discourse towards the caravans, to the point that López Obrador came to ensure that it was the “coyotes” that organized the marches to the north.
On June 7, 2019, Mexico and the United States signed an agreement whereby López Obrador pledged to tighten immigration control in exchange for Washington’s non-tariff on exports. This involved the militarization of the southern border through the National Guard and the increase in the number of foreigners detained by remaining in an irregular situation. If in 2018 there were 131 thousand 445 that were presented to the immigration authorities, this figure soared in 2019 to 179 thousand 335 in the absence of account in December.
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Original source in Spanish

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