2,000 migrants continue walk through southern Mexico – KIRO 7 News Seattle

HUEHUETAN, Mexico – (AP) – A group of about 2,000 mostly Central American migrants continued their mass migration from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on Sunday, arriving at a city about 16 miles away.

The migrants set out before dawn to avoid the burning heat. Mostly from Honduras and El Salvador, many were accompanied by small children. Around noon on the second day of their march, they reached the city of Huehuetan in the southern state of Chiapas.

Unlike previous marches that began Saturday from Tapachula, not as many Haitian migrants took part, with thousands reaching the U.S. border around Del Rio, Texas in September.

Tens of thousands of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti are waiting in Tapachula near the Guatemalan border for refugee or asylum papers that could enable them to travel, but are tired of the delays in the process.

Mexico requires migrants applying for humanitarian visas or asylum to stay in the border state of Chiapas, Guatemala, so their cases can be processed.

Anthony Beltrandez, a Cuban who left his country to go to Uruguay in 2018, waited 1 1/2 months in Tapachula for papers that would enable him to reach the US border.

“But they took a long time,” said Beltrandez, a furniture restorer. So he decided to join the group of migrants who left Tapachula on Saturday.

“There was a lot of heat, a lot of sun,” Beltrandez said of the walk.

On the first day of the march, the migrants pushed past a line of state police officers trying to stop them. There was minor scuffle and a young child suffered a minor head injury, but the migrants continued on their way.

They made it just a few miles (kilometers) to the nearby village of Alvaro Obregon on Saturday before stopping for a night rest on a baseball field.

“We don’t want problems with anyone,” said Beltrandez when the group reached Huehuetan on Sunday. “We want to make everything peaceful.”

Police, immigration authorities and the National Guard abandoned minor attempts at similar outbreaks earlier this year. In August, National Guard forces in riot gear blocked several hundred Haitians, Cubans and Central Americans walking along a highway from Tapachula.

In January, a larger caravan of migrants attempted to leave Honduras but were prevented from crossing Guatemala.

José Antonio, a Hondurian in the youngest group who refused to give his last name because he feared it might affect his case, said he had been waiting in Tapachula for two months for a response to his application for some kind of visa.

“They told me I had to wait because the appointments were fully booked,” said the construction worker. “There is no work there (in Tapachula), so I joined this group out of necessity.”

The marches are reminiscent, but not nearly as big, of the huge migrant caravans that crossed Mexico towards the US border in 2018 and 2019.

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