Another migrant caravan of 15,000 prepares to leave Honduras

Tegucigalpa, January 5 (RHC)-- Another migrant caravan is preparing to leave Honduras in the coming days.  According to reports, an estimated 15,000 people will leave from San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras on January 15th.

"They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan," said Irma Garrido, a member of the Reactiva Tijuana Foundation migrant advocacy group.

The new caravan will probably be joined by more people from El Salvador and Guatemala.  According to Garrido, they will not immediately attempt to reach the Mexico-U.S. border where a large number of Central American migrants are currently stranded and face obstacles to apply for asylum.

“They will stay in the south of Mexico in Chiapas and Oaxaca.  Their aim is to request work there,” Garrido told the Los Angeles Times.  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) promised jobs and visas for the Central American migrants.

Lopez Obrador made humane “comprehensive” immigration policy a central tenet of his campaign platform in 2018 and signed a deal with the leaders of the Northern Triangle countries (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador) to create “programs (and) projects ... in order to create jobs and fight poverty in the region,” just hours after being sworn in on December 1st.

A local media from Chiapas reported that although the new caravan will not go to Tijuana, some of the immigrants plan to head there, hoping to enter the United States.