Hours before Trump’s inauguration, 1,500-strong migrant caravan departs from Chiapas

Just hours earlier Donald Trump was to beryllium sworn successful arsenic the 47th president of the United States connected Monday, a migrant caravan departed the confederate Mexican borderline municipality of Tapachula, Chiapas, with the volition of reaching the United States.

Roughly 1,500 migrants departed Tapachula earlier dawn and trekked astir 26 kilometers to the municipality of Huehuetan wherever they planned connected resting for the day. 

A migrant parent and kid walking northbound from Tapachula, Chiapas, successful the aboriginal hours of the time connected Monday. (Damián Sánchez/Cuartoscuro)

Members of the caravan — the 4th specified radical to caput northbound from the Guatemala borderline during the archetypal 3 weeks of the twelvemonth — told the paper Excelsior that they would resume their march northbound connected Monday night.

By the clip they resume their journey, Trump volition apt person declared a nationalist exigency astatine the U.S. confederate borderline arsenic portion of the sweeping crackdown connected migration that helium has promised to pursue.

Trump is expected to contented astir 10 enforcement actions connected his archetypal time successful bureau to commencement reshaping U.S. migration and borderline policy, CBS News reported, including sending U.S. subject troops to the confederate borderline with Mexico.

The groundbreaking CBP One mobile app that allowed noncitizens to docket appointments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reportedly been discontinued by the incoming administration.

The Trump medication has unopen down the CBP One telephone app for migrants. The Biden-era process allowed astir 1 cardinal migrants to participate the U.S. astatine ineligible borderline crossings.

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Several migrants told the paper El Diario del Sur that thing would deter them from trying to transverse into the United States.

“We are not acrophobic of Donald Trump’s threats … due to the fact that God is with us,” said Luis, a migrant from Honduras.

Another migrant, Jesús from Venezuela, said they are determined to flooded each obstacles.

“Regardless of Trump’s warnings, migrants don’t privation to beryllium stuck successful Tapachula,” helium told the paper El Diario del Sur. “We’ve asked [Mexico’s] National Migration Institute (INM) for the indispensable documents to let america to question northbound wherever we’ll effort to transverse into the United States.”

Even earlier migrants scope the U.S. border, they’ll look challenges from Mexican authorities who person begun clamping down connected migrants headed toward the U.S. border.

A caller migrant argumentation referred to arsenic “dispersion and exhaustion” has seen Mexican migration authorities connection exhausted migrants who person been walking for respective weeks autobus tickets to cities farther north. However, they are past dispersed astatine assorted cities not located on the accepted migrant way wherever they are often incapable to get due documents to proceed their travels to the U.S. border.

With reports from Excelsior, Diario del Sur, CBS News and Vida Nueva