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A Honduran migrant woman carries a child on her back every bit they travel with other migrants by foot along a highway in Chiquimula, Republic of guatemala, on Saturday, in hopes of reaching the U.Due south. border. Sandra Sebastian/AP hide caption

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Sandra Sebastian/AP

A Honduran migrant woman carries a child on her back as they travel with other migrants past foot forth a highway in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Saturday, in hopes of reaching the U.S. border.

Sandra Sebastian/AP

Republic of guatemala security forces are attempting to block thousands of Honduran migrants from heading n towards Mexico and the U.S. border.

On Dominicus, police and soldiers in riot gear confronted a caravan of migrants from Honduras on a highway most Chiquimula in southeastern Republic of guatemala. Later on a tense standoff, in which police fired tear gas and attempted to beat dorsum the migrants with batons, the surging oversupply bankrupt through a phalanx of soldiers.

Guillermo Díaz, Guatemala's tiptop clearing official, says that since Friday 7,000-8,000 Hondurans have crossed in to Guatemala in an "irregular" fashion.

"Nosotros are very concerned about this situation," Díaz says in a video on his department's Facebook page. "These people who've formed this caravan or are forming into a caravan...is a very difficult situation to manage." Guatemala has ready up checkpoints on main roads leading to and from the Honduran border. Nevertheless, Díaz says many of the migrants have left the main roads and are now arriving in towns in the middle of the country. Officials are very worried, he adds, considering another group of roughly the aforementioned size is on its mode.

"Nosotros promise this situation stops," he says. "And this menstruum of migrants ends."

Mexican authorities praised the Guatemalan authorities'south forceful response to the migrants. United mexican states has beefed upwards security on its ain southern border with Guatemala in apprehension of the caravan. Mexico likewise sent six buses south to assistance transport Hondurans back to their home land. The Mexican Secretary for Foreign Affairs issued a statement calling on Honduran officials to do more to cease the "irregular menstruum" of citizens through the region.

But migrants in the caravan say they have picayune choice just to march north.

"We don't desire to live in Honduras anymore," Ana Murillo told the French news agency Agence France-Presse. Continuing with a group of migrants beside a busy road in southern Republic of guatemala, she says Hondurans have been badly affected by hurricanes Eta and Iota, which slammed into the country in November. Republic of honduras also suffers from incredibly loftier rates of trigger-happy crime and the pandemic has crippled the economy.

"At that place isn't any piece of work. There are no opportunities," she says. A light blue cloth face mask hangs from her mentum, several numberless and children are at her feet. "We are leaving considering we don't desire to endure further."

Honduran migrants clash with Guatemalan soldiers in Vado Hondo, Guatemala, on Dominicus. Sandra Sebastian/AP hide explanation

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Sandra Sebastian/AP

Some other migrant, Miguel Angel, tells AFP he's heading north now because he believes U.S. clearing policy will modify in one case Joe Biden takes office as president.

"I have promise and faith in God, and in the good person that the United states has chosen," he says.

"Biden is a skilful person and isn't the same as the administration that'due south simply ended."

Simply his chances of making information technology to the U.S./Mexico edge are far less than they were a few years agone. In Oct 2020, another caravan of Hondurans dispersed earlier it got across Guatemala, and Guatemalan officials said they sent more than than 3,000 Hondurans home from that group.

In 2019, Mexico deployed National Guard troops to its southern border to deter Cardinal Americans from trying to cross.

Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., says he doesn't think information technology's likely that many of the Hondurans in this current caravan will make information technology all the way to the U.S. frontier. "I suspect that if this caravan actually fabricated information technology to the Guatemalan/Mexico border that in that location would be even the heavier presence of (Mexican) National Guard to try to detain the migrants," he says. "Nosotros saw this again in October. That caravan really stopped in Republic of guatemala at that time. And then I don't foresee them getting to the U.Southward./Mexico border in large numbers."

Before the pandemic, nationals from Guatemala, Republic of honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua were able to travel freely across each other's borders. Officials now are requiring a negative coronavirus test to cross. Some migrant advocates say this requirement is beingness used to block some refugees from seeking asylum away.

Honduran migrants, part of a caravan heading to the United States, stand up in front of a police cordon in Vado Hondo, Guatemala on Sunday. Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the Middle for American Progress, agrees with Ruiz that this electric current caravan is unlikely to turn into a crisis for the Biden administration during its first few weeks in office.

"In 2018, in advance of the ballot there were a lot people holding their breath about caravans that dissipated long before they ever came close to the Us edge," Jawetz says.

Despite that, he says the incoming Biden squad can't ignore immigration and the immigration policies of the approachable Trump administration for long.

"A number of the steps that were taken by the final administration to try to deter people from coming to the country where not only illegal, simply unconscionable," he says.

Humans accept been migrating since prehistoric times. Migration isn't going to stop. Fifty-fifty if this caravan doesn't make it to the U.S. border, other migrants are already at that place waiting. Some other potential migrants may view the change in administration in Washington as an opportunity to try to enter.

"Even if that were the case, to what ends would you go in social club to caput that off?" Jawetz asks. "Would you lot accept them violate U.S. law, international law, and prevent people from requesting asylum at the border? Would yous take them have their children abroad in order to send fear into the hearts of families throughout the region?"

Shortly later on he takes office, Biden is going to have to face the big questions effectually what Jawetz calls the U.Due south.'s "broken" immigration system.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/18/958092745/migrant-caravan-thousands-move-into-guatemala-hoping-to-reach-u-s

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