Migrants in caravans meet Trump

Donaji, Mexico . While US President Donald Trump spoke of his anti-immigrant rhetoric ahead of Tuesday's parliamentary elections, exhausted Central American Americans walking in southern Mexico in the hope of reaching US soil have largely said perplexed and annoyed. for certain threats that they considered exaggerated.

Trump spent the last days of the campaign talking about immigration to try to mobilize Republican voters. His favorite target was the caravan of nearly 4,000 people that follows about 1,290 kilometers (about 800 km) from the border. closer. Three other smaller groups advance behind.

The President recently announced that he was considering signing an order to detain migrants crossing the southern border and to prohibit anyone found illegally in the territory of the asylum from asking for the 39; asylum. Both proposals raise legal doubts. Trump also said that he had told the mobilized soldiers on the southwestern border that while they were facing migrants who were throwing stones at them, they should react as if he were going to kill him. used to be "rifles".

"It's pure ignorance that to think it's a stone, it's not the same as a rifle," said Marta Cuellos, a 40-year-old migrant woman of Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras.

Although some migrants have clashed with the Mexican police on a bridge at the Guatemalan border, most of the caravan members are peaceful and claim to be fleeing violence and poverty in their home country. Those who visited Friday the state of Oaxaca, in the south of the country, said that they were not looking for problems.

Collos said that in Honduras he was holding a canteen, but he left because he could no longer pay the rent and that he was being harbaded by the police. She convinced her 35-year-old sister to accompany her on her trip and said she only wanted to work and have a better life in the United States. This will be his second attempt to achieve this. She crossed the border seven years ago, but was deported last year.

Selvin Maldonado, 25, of Copan, Honduras, left his wife and a little girl at home to look for a better life and raise their children. Dennys, his 5 year old son, accompanies him in his walk.

"What Trump said is stupid," said Maldonado via Donaji. "I do not want to attack the police because I think of my son."

Migrants also rejected the president's description. the slow caravan and the three smaller ones following their "invasion" path. Trump proposed to stop migrants in huge tent cities erected at the border.

"We are not murderers," said Stephany Lopez, a 21-year-old Salvadoran who travels in the first group. "We just want to let ourselves work for a few years, and then he wants us to practice a sport."

López stated that the chief's mother, born in Scotland, was an immigrant.

"I think we are the same, it was the emigrants who raised this country," he added.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in June that domestic violence and gangs would no longer be generally accepted grounds for granting asylum. Trump said this week that participants in the caravan would not benefit from protection – although US law allows them to ask – and advised them to turn around.

The violent opposition and harsh rhetoric of the Trump government led at least one migrant to weigh the alternatives.

Tifany Morandis, 19, was traveling with her husband, Javier Sánchez, 28, and their two children, Ángel, 7, and César, 9 months. The sun and face burned by the sun after many days on the road, she said that she was tired and that she was planning to stop in the Mexican border town of Tijuana.

"Donald Trump has complicated everything on the border and to fight with him, we had better stay in Tijuana," he said.

But many have hope. "Even stones soften," said Collos.