MEXICO CITY (AP) — A big caravan of Central American migrants that has stirred up concerns in the U.S., including drawing tweets from President Donald Trump, has halted its march for a rest at a sports field in southern Mexico.
The U.S. leader warned about “caravans” of migrants heading to the U.S., and others questioned whether the caravan of approximately 1,100 people was moving across Mexico toward its northern border with the intent of crossing into the United States.
On Monday, the mass of mostly Hondurans that had been walking along roadsides and train tracks stopped in Oaxaca state at the field, where they are getting advice on filing for transit or humanitarian visas in Mexico. Many took refuge from the hot afternoon sun by resting in the stands under the awning. As night fell, the migrants, many with children, lit fires to cook their meager rations.
A group of a couple hundred men did break off from the march Sunday, hopping a freight train north probably with hopes of trying to enter the U.S. But the rest seemed unlikely to move again until Wednesday or Thursday, and they probably would take buses to the last scheduled stop for the caravan, a migrant rights symposium in central Puebla state.
Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the activist group behind the annual symbolic event designed to draw attention to the plight of migrants, said the caravan would continue only to Puebla southeast of Mexico City, “but not in a massive way.”
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