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MEXICO – President Trump threatened on Tuesday to suspend aid to the Honduran government if he did not interrupt the mass migration of 2,000 people, mainly from Honduras, who entered Guatemala this week for the purpose. to reach the United States.
"The United States has firmly informed the President of Honduras that if the large caravan of people heading for the United States has not been stopped and returned to Honduras, no money or assistance will be immediately granted to the United States. Honduras! "Said President Trump at his Twitter account.
The migrants began their march Friday in San Pedro Sula, a city in northern Honduras. Moving on foot and in vehicles, they entered Guatemala on Monday, passed two police roadblocks and stopped for the night in the city of Esquipulas.
According to some estimates, the size of the group could reach 2,000 people.
Tens of thousands of Hondurans and other inhabitants of Central America have migrated north in recent years, fleeing endemic violence, poverty or a combination of these factors. Some have sometimes chosen to travel in caravans – large, semi-coordinated groups – in size, providing participants with some degree of security against the many perils that threaten the migrant trail, including assaults, loneliness and desertification. extortion and rape.
These caravans have been an annual event for years and have generally gone well without much attention and international attention.
But a group of migrants earlier this year drew the attention of President Trump, who posted on Twitter messages warning that they posed a threat to US sovereignty. He used their migration to help justify the deployment of the National Guard on the southwestern border of the United States.
This caravan, which also included many Hondurans and whose number was estimated at 1,200 before declining, finally reached the northern border of Mexico, a huge contingent of international media. After a tense standoff at the Tijuana border post, several hundred people were finally allowed to seek asylum in the United States, while others merged into Mexican society, returned to their home country or attempted to illegally enter the United States.
During this migration, Mr. Trump also threatened Honduras, saying that foreign aid to this nation, as well as "the countries that allow this to happen," was "at stake".
Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement Monday that the current caravan was "the result of well-known and well-known shortcomings", referring to undocumented immigrants apprehended at home. the border who are released to wait for the treatment of their case.
"Until Congress acts, we will continue to have de facto open borders guaranteeing future" caravans "and a record number of family cells illegally entering the country," Waldman said. the Associated Press agency.
Despite Trump's warnings on Tuesday, it was still unclear what the Honduran government could do to bring back migrants, now that they were on Guatemalan soil. President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, has not reacted publicly in the immediate aftermath.
The caravan was formed a day after Vice President Mike Pence, at a meeting in Washington, urged the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to do a better job by preventing their citizens from emigrating.
"Tell your people: Do not put your families at risk by taking the dangerous northern journey to try to enter the United States illegally," said Mr. Pence.
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