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A throng of Central American migrants continues their trek toward the U.S. border in southern Mexico. They’ve grown to at least 5,000 people on Sunday.
USA TODAY
Honduran migrants take part in a caravan heading to the US on the road linking Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico on October 21, 2018. – Thousands of Honduran migrants resumed their march toward the United States on Sunday from the southern Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo, AFP journalists at the scene said. (Photo: PEDRO PARDO, AFP/Getty Images)
An estimated 7,200 Central American migrants marching toward the United States are defying borders, law officers and America’s president, whose repeated threats have failed to shake their quest for asylum at America’s southern border.
Calling it “an assault,” President Donald Trump said he would send as many troops to the border “as necessary” to stop the migrants’ caravan, which on Tuesday was at least 1,100 miles from the nearest U.S.-Mexico border entry in McAllen, Texas.
The migrants have pushed past police with riot shields. Jumped on makeshift rafts. Slept stranded on a bridge without food or water. Trudged miles through multiple nations.
And along the way they’ve talked to journalists. Their words, collected here from USA Today, The Associated Press and foreign media outlets offer a glimpse at why men, women and children would endure the harsh uncertainty of the caravan — and why it’s better than what they left behind.
Why they won’t turn back: ‘I don’t care if I die’
Olivin Castellanos, 58, a truck driver and mason from Villanueva, Honduras, told the AP that he took a raft into Mexico. He hopes to work in construction in the United States.
“No one will stop us, only God,” he said Sunday after migrants streamed into Mexico from Guatamala. “We knocked down the door and we continue walking.”
“We are going to get to the border of the U.S.,” Luis Puerto, 39, of Colon, Honduras, said in English. “I am not going to stop. I don’t care if I die.”
“On this journey, one doesn’t eat well, sleep well and never rests,” Maria Lourdes Aguilar, 49, told Guatevision, the Guatemalan TV channel. Aguilar is traveling with her two sons and four grandchildren under 10.
“We’re used to it. Our own president doesn’t want us, it doesn’t matter to us that Trump doesn’t want us either,” she said.
A caravan of more than 1,500 Honduran migrants moves north after crossing the border from Honduras into Guatemala on Oct. 15, 2018 in Esquipulas, Guatemala. (Photo: John Moore, Getty Images)
Why they left: Death threats, extortion and poverty
In Honduras, Cristian repaired cell phones. In America, he’d do anything.
“I want to get to the States to contribute to that country,” he told the AP last week, “to do any kind of work, picking up garbage.”
Cristian, 34, shuttered his small business and left San Pedro Sula after gang members demanded $83 per month in protection payments — a fifth of his income. He has four daughters, and declined to give his last name after gangsters threatened him.
Jimenez Flores, a truck driver, faced death threats after he called the police on a gang that attacked his brother.
“I spent four months hidden,” he said. “I couldn’t even go into the street. I can’t go back.”
Alba Luz Giron Ramirez, a mother of three and former shop worker, left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, after gangs killed her brother and threatened her. On Friday, she stood in a throng of women with small children at the border gate from Guatemalato Mexico.
“Please … Let us pass,” she pleaded to border authorities. Her son Ramon, 5, spoke quietly.
“We want them to give us permission to go to Mexico,” the boy said. “We wouldn’t stay.”
More: Exclusive: Trump vows as many troops at border ‘as necessary’
Gerson Monterosa, a factory worker, fled Honduras after a group of young men demanded roughly $200 a month in “rent” — meaning extortion — just for living in his own home. (One in five Hondurans live on less than $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank.)
“They gave me a piece of paper saying that if I didn’t pay them they were going to kill me,” Monterosa said this week. “They gave a week or they were going to burn down the house.”
José Anibal Rivera, 52, an unemployed security guard from San Pedro Sula, crossed into Mexico by raft Sunday and joined the caravan. “There are like 500 more people behind me,” he told the AP.
ESQUIPULAS, GUATEMALA – OCTOBER 15: A caravan of more than 1,500 Honduran migrants pauses at a Guatemalan police checkpoint after crossing the border from Honduras on October 15, 2018 in Esquipulas, Guatemala. The caravan, the second of 2018, began Friday in San Pedro Sula, Honduras with plans to march north through Guatemala and Mexico en route to the United States. Honduras has some of the highest crime and poverty rates in Latin America. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 775243532 ORIG FILE ID: 1052219302 (Photo: John Moore, Getty Images)
Why they won’t heed warnings: ‘There isn’t a single terrorist here’
President Donald Trump this week claimed, with no evidence, that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” were mixed into the caravan. But AP journalists traveling with the caravan for over a week have met no Middle Eastern people, nor has caravan organizer Denis Omar Contreras.
“There isn’t a single terrorist here,”Contreras told AP, noting migrants come from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. “As far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt governments.”
More: Small Mexican town teeming with caravan migrants
Though migrants know that they’re less than welcome by Trump and others in the countries they pass through.
“We know very well that this country (Mexico) did not welcome us the way we had hoped and we know that we can return to Honduras and we also know that there are narcotraffickers who kidnap and kill migrants,” Juan Carlos Flores, 47, told Guatevision.
“But we live in greater fear in our country, as so we continue forward.”
Scarleth Cruz, 21, said she left oppression in Honduras but would take political asylum in Mexico.
“Why would I want to go to the United States if I’m going to be persecuted” there as well, she said.
Contributing: Associated Press, Sergio Bustos of USA TODAY and David Agren
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