Largest Migrant Caravan in a Year Heads Toward U.S. Southern Border

AP Photo/Moises Castillo

A large migrant caravan left southern Mexico on Monday for the United States. Caravan organizers said that there are around 5,000 in the group. Mexican officials put the number at about 3,500 migrants.

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Many of the migrants are from Central America and Venezuela. Most are from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras. They are traveling on foot from Tapachula in southern Mexico, near the Guatemalan border.

Irineo Mujica, a caravan organizer, said the migrants decided to leave Tapachula out of frustration about not being able to obtain humanitarian visas. Some migrants were offered help to recover efforts in Mexican port of Acapulco which was devastated last week by a hurricane. The Mexican authorities have been very slow to respond. The government’s National Migration Institute did not have a comment.

The migrants are being escorted by civil protection officials and ambulances. They are walking on a coastal highway and planned for their first stop to be in the municipality of Huehuetan, about 16 miles north of where they started.

Most of the migrants are fleeing poverty and political instability. These are not reasons to be granted asylum in the United States, yet they will be allowed to file their asylum claims and remain in the U.S. waiting for a court date, as that is what happens in Biden’s America. There has been a record number of crossings in the Darien Gap region that connects Panama and Colombia.

Venezuelans have left their country by the millions. This is due to the economic crisis that the full embrace of socialism brought the once-prosperous oil-rich country.

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“In Venezuela things are very tough, we can’t live with the money we get, it’s not enough for us, and that’s why we’re going to the United States,” said Oscar Gutierrez, a Venezuelan migrant traveling with his wife and two daughters.

Mr. Gutierrez will find out at some point in time that economic hardship is not a reason to be granted asylum in America. He and his family will likely be allowed to remain in the United States for however long it takes to process his claim, probably years due to the backlog.

This migrant march to the U.S.-Mexico border is among the largest since June 2022. In 2018 and 2019, migrant caravans drew a lot of attention but the sad truth is that now it is not uncommon for 10,000 migrants to show up at the U.S. border on any given day. A march of either 3,500 or 5,000 illegal immigrants invading the United States is not so newsworthy to most people. In other words, mass migration by illegal immigrants is becoming normalized. The shock factor has worn off and the news reports seem like just another day in Biden’s America.

Mújica later wrote in a message that the group had only made it about 9 miles (14 kilometers), and had stopped to spend the night in the town of Alvaro Obregon. He wrote the group planned to try and cover more distance in the coming days, but that the number of women and children had to be taken into account.

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The women and children are slowing the caravan down.

The migrant caravan may slow a bit as tropical storm Pilar has formed off Central America in the Pacific. It threatens to dump heavy rain on the region.

In an often contemptuous Senate hearing Tuesday, DHS Secretary Mayorkas admitted for the first time that there were over 600,000 known gotaways at the southern border in FY 2023. During questioning by Senator Marshall (R-KS), Mayorkas admitted he has no idea how many of those gotaways may be on the terror watch list. Gotaways run from law enforcement at the border instead of turning themselves in so they are not vetted at all.

The Biden border crisis is a humanitarian crisis and a national security crisis. I shudder to think what has to happen before Biden and his administration admit that the border is open and unsustainably chaotic.

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