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Honduran refugee caravan crosses into Mexico through river
Source: Associated Press
Honduran refugee caravan crosses into Mexico through river
Associated Press in Ciudad Hidalgo
Sun 21 Oct 2018 14.41 BST
About 2,000 Central Americans trying to reach the US in a “migrant caravan” have swam or rafted across a river separating Guatemala from Mexico, defying Mexican efforts to stop them at the border.
The refugees, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered on Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to join them.
“We are going to reach the United States,” said Erasmo Duarte, from Danlí, Honduras, despite warnings to turn back this week from the US president, Donald Trump, who has sought to make the caravan and border security into a campaign issue before the US midterm election in November.
The decision to re-form the caravan came on the day that Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to refugees on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at US border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.
-snip-
Associated Press in Ciudad Hidalgo
Sun 21 Oct 2018 14.41 BST
About 2,000 Central Americans trying to reach the US in a “migrant caravan” have swam or rafted across a river separating Guatemala from Mexico, defying Mexican efforts to stop them at the border.
The refugees, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, gathered on Saturday at a park in the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo. They voted by a show of hands to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to join them.
“We are going to reach the United States,” said Erasmo Duarte, from Danlí, Honduras, despite warnings to turn back this week from the US president, Donald Trump, who has sought to make the caravan and border security into a campaign issue before the US midterm election in November.
The decision to re-form the caravan came on the day that Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to refugees on the bridge, instead accepting small groups for asylum processing and giving out 45-day visitor permits to some. Authorities handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at US border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/21/honduran-migrant-caravan-crosses-into-mexico-through-river
