The Mexican government has reinforced security at its southern border with Guatemala before a 2,000-person caravan of Hondurans is expected to try to enter the country and head for the United States, according to a local report.
Hundreds of Mexican Federal Police, including General Commissioner Manelich Castilla, and officers from the National Institute of Migration, the country’s immigration agency, arrived in Tapachula, Chiapas, on Tuesday.
Chiapas is one of two Mexican states that border Guatemala. Federal officials believe the Honduran group will try to enter Mexico from the state’s 200-mile international border, according to La Prensa.
The State Department confirmed to the Washington Examiner Tuesday afternoon that the “large group of migrants is making its way north to Mexico and onwards” to the U.S. border.
“We are concerned that these migrants have been the victims of false promises by those seeking to exploit them,” a State official wrote in an email. “We continue to partner with Central America countries to address the underlying economic, security, and governance conditions that drive illegal immigration to the United States.”
The group left Honduras last week and arrived in Guatemala Monday. It started out as 160 people and has grown to what local police estimate is now 2,000 people, according to an Associated Press report.
Mexico’s Interior Ministry warned Saturday it will only allow those granted visas to cross into the country. Those in the caravan would have had to have applied for visas at the Mexican consulates in Honduras.
The caravan is the second major group of Central American citizens to migrate to the U.S. this year following one this spring.
That group passed through Mexico and later crossed into the U.S. by requesting asylum at ports of entry and illegally crossing between ports.
DHS previously told the Washington Examiner that smugglers often bring small groups of less than a dozen people from Central America then hold them in border towns just south of the U.S.-Mexico border. Then, they will lead 100 to 200 people over at once.
DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said the latest incident of a caravan originating in Central America is due to the “de facto open borders” of America due to “loopholes” in immigration laws that allow families and kids from noncontiguous countries to be released after being taken into federal custody.
President Trump on Tuesday threatened to suspend all financial aid to Honduras if the president did not stop the group from leaving, though they had already crossed into Guatemala by then. He made the same threat in April.
Honduras leads the world as the country with the highest murder rate. The country is home to 8.25 million people and has reported 90.4 murders for every 100,000 residents, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
