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QUERETARO, Mexico (AP) – Local Mexican authorities once again helped thousands of Central Americans migrate to the US border on Sunday.
On a toll platform west of the city of Queretaro, central Mexico, where the group spent the night from Saturday to Friday, the police helped find trucks to pick up migrants and refugees. prevented trying to stop the drivers themselves.
The Queretaro government said via Twitter that 6,531 migrants crossed this state between Friday and Saturday. 5,771 of them would leave Sunday morning after staying in three shelters that they had prepared, the most important of which was a football stadium in the state capital.
These figures seemed even higher than the figures set by officials when the group was in Mexico City for several days, suggesting that other migrants would have caught up with the main caravan.
The migrants started walking before dawn on Sunday for Irapuato, about 100 km to the west, after entering the state of Guanajuato, where the local authorities also assisted them.
A day earlier, a similar scene was unfolding when the caravan had left Mexico City. Dedicated metropolitan trains were passing migrants into the capital before dawn and, on a toll to the north of the city, they formed neat lines to wait for their turn and board the 18-wheeler help them travel the 200 kilometers that separated them. Queretaro.
Emilson Manuel Figueroa managed to sit at the back of a truck carrying trucks of immigrants.
"I think in my country I will grow old and never have enough to live on," said the 23-year-old Honduran taxi driver.
The migrants seem to be on a path to Tijuana, just across the border with San Diego, which is still 2,575 kilometers away.
The caravan became a campaign issue during the mid-term elections in the United States, and US President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 troops at the border to repel the migrants. Trump also insinuated without evidence that there were criminals or even terrorists in the group.
Many migrants claim to flee endemic poverty, gang violence and political instability mainly in the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. They are now on the road for weeks.
Mexico offered migrants asylum, asylum or work visas, and his government said 2,697 temporary visas had been issued to individuals and families to protect them while they waited for the process. 45 days to obtain a more permanent status.
But most have vowed to continue in the United States.
"(In the United States), we can earn more and give something to our family, but in Honduras, even when we want to give something to our children, we can not, because the little we win is only for food, to pay for the house and the light, nothing else, "said 28-year-old Nubia Morazan of Honduras as she prepared to leave on Sunday with her husband and two children.
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Christopher Sherman, AP writer in Mexico, contributed to this report.
