Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said that due to a lack of help from countries like Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala (as well as stubborn inaction on the part of the Democrats), he may be left with no choice but to shut the border down entirely. On the same day, Customs and Border Patrol announced that illegal immigrants were breaking daily records going back ten years, the flow was so strong from the south.
And in the meantime, Mexican officials say they are bracing for the arrival of a caravan of Central American immigrants far larger than those that have come before.
From the Associated Press:
Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero has said a caravan of migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala could be forming.
“We have information that a new caravan is forming in Honduras, that they’re calling ‘the mother of all caravans,’ and they are thinking it could have more than 20,000 people,” Sanchez Cordero said Wednesday.
[…]
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that Mexico is doing its part to fight immigrant smuggling.
“We are going to do everything we can to help. We don’t in any way want a confrontation with the U.S. government,” he said. “It is legitimate that they are displeased and they voice these concerns.”
Sanchez Cordero has pledged to form a police line of “containment” around Mexico’s narrow Tehuantepec Isthmus to stop migrants from continuing north to the U.S. border.
The containment belt would consist of federal police and immigration agents, but such highway blockades and checkpoints have not stopped large and determined groups of migrants in the past.
There is some doubt as to whether the caravan in question is as large as Mexican officials fear. Immigrant activists and the Honduran government have denied the numbers quoted by the interior secretary, saying that no caravan of that size exists.
Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Nelly Jerez said, “There is no indication of such a caravan. This type of information promotes that people leave the country.”
Oh, we kind of doubt that, considering that groups like Pueblo Sin Fronteras are downplaying the figures. If they thought this would “promote” more people to join the caravans, they would be embracing that “mother of all caravans” label in a heartbeat.
No, what both Honduras and the activists are concerned about is that a caravan this size might finally wake the American people to the crisis we’re facing at the border, put pressure on Democrats to work with President Trump, and eliminate the lax immigration policies that led to this ongoing disaster in the first place. And THAT is the last thing they want.
