Brisas Barra de Suchiate (Mexico) (AFP) - Mexico deployed hundreds of riot police Thursday to its border with Guatemala as a caravan of Central American migrants prepared to cross on their way to the United States, defying President Donald Trump's threats.

Hundreds of federal police in riot gear fanned out on the international bridge in Suchiate, on the Mexican-Guatemalan border, as the caravan of several thousand Honduran migrants trekked toward the crossing.

Guatemala also sent police reinforcements to its side of the border, after Trump threatened to cut aid to the region, deploy the military and close the US-Mexican border if the migrants were allowed to continue.

A first group of several hundred migrants arrived late Wednesday in the border town of Tecun Uman, Guatemala, where they overflowed a local shelter, leaving many to sleep in the town square or on the street, an AFP correspondent said.

Many were traveling with a single change of clothes and little money. Others were carrying young children in their arms.

The migrants planned to wait for the rest of the caravan to arrive, then cross the border en masse in hopes of overwhelming the Mexican authorities, who have vowed to detain anyone without a visa.

The caravan successfully used the same strategy Monday to cross from Honduras to Guatemala at the border town of Agua Caliente, despite efforts by some 100 police to stop them.

"We're going to rest here and wait for the others who are on their way so we can enter (Mexico) en masse, like we did at Agua Caliente," Edgar Elias, one of the leaders of the caravan, told AFP.

But nature may complicate that plan: the shallow Suchiate river, which forms the border, was swollen by rain overnight.

That will likely reduce the number of places where the migrants can attempt to cross the highly porous border illegally, especially since many are traveling with young children. </s> At least 25 Central American migrants and refugees died and dozens more were injured on Thursday after the truck they were travelling in overturned in southern Mexico, according to authorities.

The Chiapas state prosecutor's office said in a statement late on Thursday that 29 others were injured in the accident. It appears the driver lost control of the truck near the town of Francisco Sarabia in the municipality of Soyalo.

The injured were transported to hospitals. Authorities did not provide the nationalities of the victims, and say the investigation continues.

The truck involved in this accident was carrying an estimated 80 people, said Isidro Hernandez of the local Red Cross. Some who were not injured may have fled.

The fatalities include at least one minor, Hernandez added.

Chiapas is the main entry point for Central American migrants arriving in Mexico from Guatemala.

Every year, thousands of Central Americans, mainly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, attempt dangerous trips through Mexico trying to reach the United States or attempting to find opportunities for work in Mexico.

Many travel in group caravans for safety, while others hire human traffickers who put them in overcrowded trucks with often unsanitary conditions.

Central Americans have told Al Jazeera they are fleeing poverty, violence and political persecution. </s> TECUN UMAN, Guatemala (Reuters) - Hundreds of Central Americans in a U.S.-bound migrant caravan were stuck on Guatemala’s border with Mexico on Saturday as efforts began, under pressure from Washington, to send some home and stop their journey northward.

Many of the migrants, the overwhelming majority fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras, had slept through heavy rain overnight on a bridge connecting Guatemala to Mexico, as dozens crammed against a metal border gate guarded by Mexican police.

In the early morning hours, Guatemalan police said they had transported 62 Hondurans in two buses, among the first such efforts to remove migrants from the tense border crossing on the Suchiate River.

For days U.S. President Donald Trump has warned the Central American caravan must be stopped. He has made it a political issue in the Nov. 6 midterm U.S. congressional election, threatened to cut off regional aid, close the U.S.-Mexico border and deploy troops there if Mexico failed to halt the migrants.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was due to meet his Guatemalan counterpart Jimmy Morales in the Guatemalan capital on Saturday for talks on implementing a strategy for returning the Honduran migrants.

Organizers said the caravan included around 4,000 migrants on Friday but there has been no official estimate of the sprawling number of men, women and children traveling north on foot and in vehicles.

“The (U.S.) tone is one of worry and they told us that we should act like allies,” a senior aide to Guatemala’s president told Reuters, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly.

“It’s really a very delicate situation because this could generate more caravans,” he said.

On Friday, hundreds of migrants at the head of the caravan had poured through Guatemalan border posts and onto the bridge, but were repelled by dozens of shield-bearing Mexican police. Several complained they had been teargassed.

Drained from days of walking and frustrated, many spent the night in the open. Some stretched towels and garbage bags along the bridge walls, others lay down on backpacks, while a man applied lotion to his tired feet.

Mexico’s government, which says it will process migrants’ claims for asylum individually, vowed to tackle the caravan as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met top officials in Mexico City. Pompeo urged Mexico to ensure the procession did not reach the United States.

Most of the migrants Reuters spoke to said their ultimate destination was the United States. Some said they hoped to stay in Mexico, but they had no idea how to get the documentation needed to do so.

Still, many were determined to try.

“No, I’ll fight. I’ll try again,” said Honduran Hilda Rosa as her four teenage children sat upright, beaming as she pumped the air with her fist.

The native of Tegucigalpa told a familiar tale when asked why she had left Honduras: “You know why: no work, violence.”

Most of the people now caught trying to enter the United States illegally hail from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, among the poorest and most violent countries in the Americas.

The caravan members ranged from farmers and bakers to housewives and students, and included a whole block of friends and family from the Honduran city of El Progreso, some of whom said they would start going back to where they came from on Saturday.

Jose Ramon Rodriguez, 45, a construction worker from El Progreso, sat on the Guatemalan end of the bridge late on Friday with his head hanging low, his 9-year-old son tucked against him.

“Tomorrow we go home,” he said. His companions nodded.

Among them was Osman Melgar, who nursed a bleeding gash on his shin, suffered when he fell as dozens of people packed on the bridge began fleeing when police, according to several eyewitnesses, used tear gas.

Some, including 40-year-old Adriana Consuelo, went under the bridge, paying raftsmen 25 pesos ($1.30) to ferry them across the river on vessels made of giant rubber tires.

After making it to the muddy banks of Mexico, she said, “No one checked my documents,” as Consuelo headed to a taco restaurant.

But Mexico had stepped up its efforts to stop the flow of people, migration experts said.

“Every time there’s a (migrant) caravan there are police sent to the southern border ... but we’ve never seen anything as dramatic as we’re seeing today,” said Eunice Rendon, coordinator of migrant advocacy group Agenda Migrante.

“This has everything to do with Trump,” she added. </s> A truck packed with Central American migrants swerved off a highway in southern Mexico late Thursday, leaving at least 25 dead and 29 injured, officials said.

The accident happened in Chiapas state which borders Guatemala, the state attorney general’s office said in a statement.

The three-ton truck ran off the road and overturned, it said. Every year thousands of Central Americans, mainly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, attempt dangerous trips through Mexico trying to reach the United States.

Many travel in group caravans for safety, while others hire people traffickers who put them in overcrowded trucks with appalling and sanitary conditions.

In October a caravan with as many as 7,000 people traveled through Mexico all the way to Tijuana on the border with California before eventually disbanding. </s> The caravan of Central American migrants whose trek across Mexico infuriated US President Donald Trump began breaking up Thursday, after abandoning its plan to travel en masse to the United States.

Starting in the early morning hours, the migrants began boarding buses or striking out on foot.

Some planned to head to the central Mexican city of Puebla, where the activists who organized the caravan have convened a legal clinic to help the Central Americans seek asylum or visas, whether in Mexico or the United States.

Others were continuing their journey on their own -- not all of them happy about it.

"They told us the caravan's stopping here. I don't have any money for transportation. If I had known, I wouldn't have come in the first place," said Sebastian Alvarez, 34, who left his native Honduras with his wife and three children to join the caravan, and now found himself walking up the road carrying their meager belongings in trash bags.

More than 1,000 migrants had been camped out since Saturday in the town of Matias Romero, in southern Mexico, after setting out on March 25 from Tapachula, on the border with Guatemala.

Their original plan to travel together to the US border triggered a furious backlash from Trump, who ordered the National Guard deployed to the border and threatened to ax what he called Mexico's "cash cow," the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The greatly reduced caravan is now planning to pause in Puebla, then continue to Mexico City for a rally and end its activities there.

"We expect around 500 or 600 people to come to Mexico City," said Irineo Mujica, head of the activist group People Without Borders (Pueblo sin Fronteras), which organized the caravan.

"Others are traveling to other places in Mexico where they know people, or up to the northern border," he said.

In Matias Romero, residents were donating canned food to migrants to take with them on their journey.

Local authorities were providing free buses to Puebla for the elderly and those traveling with small children.

Other migrants had to make their way however they could -- commercial buses, walking, hitchhiking or hopping the northbound freight train known as "The Beast," long used by migrants crossing Mexico toward the United States.

Mexican immigration authorities have been working with the migrants to regularize their status, while quietly urging the caravan to disperse.

The group is mostly from Honduras, but also includes Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans.

Most of them are fleeing the brutal gang violence that has made Central America home to some of the world's highest murder rates.

Many people in the group were traveling in families of up to 20 people.

The Mexican government is giving the migrants either 30-day temporary visas to allow them to apply for refugee status in Mexico, or 20-day transit visas to give them time to leave the country -- whether bound for home, the United States or elsewhere.

Mexico, which has bristled at Trump's reaction, said Monday it would be up to the United States to decide whether to admit such arrivals or not.

The caravan is an annual event held since 2010. Organizers say its goal is mainly to raise awareness about the plight of the thousands of migrants who cross Mexico each year -- though some participants have traveled all the way to the US border in the past. </s> A caravan of more than 1,500 families including men, women, and children are making their way from Central America through Mexico and are expected to arrive at the US-Mexico Border in the coming days to request refugee status.

Known as the Viacrucis Migrante 2018, the caravan began on March 25 in the state of Chiapas and is expected to reach Tijuana within a month where the members of the group are expected to request refugee status from the U.S. government. The caravan is organized by the immigrant rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras who have been posting updates about the caravan’s journey through Mexico.

The group is reportedly made up of families from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras who are fleeing extreme poverty and gang violence. The group has been demanding a stop to the violence.

While the group is made up primarily of individuals who could be considered undocumented by Mexican authorities, officials have stepped aside, Mexico’s El Universal reported. Additionally, the group has been thankful to the local governments in various rural communities in southern Mexico for helping the caravan by providing transportation, food, and other aid.

The push to the border comes at a time the Trump administration has clashed with the Mexican government over their apparent leniency when dealing with drug cartels, border security, and the payment of walls.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com. </s> About 80% of them are from Honduras. Many said they are fleeing poverty, but also political unrest and violence that followed the swearing in of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez after a highly contested election last year. The group often breaks into chants of "Out with JOH." They also chant "we aren't immigrants, we're international workers" and "the people united will never be defeated."

The number of people who showed up to travel with the caravan caught organizers by surprise, and overwhelmed the various towns they've stopped in to spend the night. Pueblos Sin Fronteras counted about 1,200 people on the first day.

When they get to the US, they hope American authorities will grant them asylum or, for some, be absent when they attempt to cross the border illegally. More likely is that it will set up an enormous challenge to the Trump administration's immigration policies and its ability to deal with an organized group of migrants numbering in the hundreds.

"If we all protect each other we'll get through this together," Abeja yelled through a loudspeaker on the morning they left Tapachula, on Mexico's border with Guatemala, for the nearly monthlong trek.

Organizers like Rodrigo Abeja hope that the sheer size of the crowd will give immigration authorities and criminals pause before trying to stop them.

Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, not only bypassing authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants.

For five days now hundreds of Central Americans — children, women and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration check points, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them.

When the agent, who'd covered her uniform with an orange and white shawl, learned that the Central Americans migrants heading her way numbered more than 1,000, she took off for the restaurant across the street.

Taking a drag from her cigarette, a Mexican immigration agent looked out toward a caravan of migrants that grew larger with each step they took on the two-lane highway.

Migrants hitchhike along the side of the highway as they move towards the city of Mapastepec, Chiapas.

Sweating after miles of walking in more than 90-degree heat with her two kids, Karen said conditions in Honduras were so bad she decided to take a chance with the caravan. She declined to give her full name.



"The crime rate is horrible you can't live there," Karen told BuzzFeed News on the side of a highway near Huixtla, a town in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. "After the president (was sworn in) it got worse. There were deaths, mobs, robbed homes, adults and kids were beaten up."

Before setting foot on the journey, the migrants were organized into groups of 10 to 15 people, and a leader was designated for each group. Five groups were then banded together in what organizers call a sector. While there are organizers from Pueblos Sin Fronteras leading the way, much of the effort to get to the US border is in the hands of the migrants themselves.

They've been organized into security, food, and logistics committees. Organizers say it's meant to help the migrants empower themselves.

Sandra Perez, 40, who's also from Honduras, is one of two women who belong to the security committee. It's not her first caravan, she has traveled with a procession of Central American mothers through Mexico in search of disappeared migrants.

"I like doing this, it makes me happy and I feel useful," she told BuzzFeed News.

Twenty-nine-year old Mateo Juan said the caravan was his third attempt at getting to the United States. Seven months ago, Mexican immigration officers pulled him off the bus. The same happened about a month ago.

He heard about the caravan in March when he arrived in Tapachula, the caravan's starting point.

"Going alone is risky, you're risking an accident, getting jumped by robbers, and even your life," he told BuzzFeed News. "All of that, and then you don't get to the United States. The caravan is slower but you know you're going to get there safely."

Still, there are no guarantees on the route or assurances that once they reach the US border they'll be able to cross undetected or be allowed to stay under some type of protection like asylum.

Alex Mensing, another organizer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, made that point clear to the migrants before the group started out. He also stressed that everyone is responsible for their own food, water, and payment for vans or buses. Still, it's far cheaper than being assaulted or falling into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers.

"I'm here to work together with the people who had to leave their countries for whatever reason," Mensing said through a loudspeaker. "We're fighting together. We're not here to give anyone papers and we're not here to give anyone food."

Mensing said Pueblos Sin Fronteras isn't calling on people to make the trek, but if they're going to try to go through Mexico on the way to the United States, the group will help them.

The caravan propels itself forward using whatever way it can. Sometimes that means packing into the back of a truck, negotiating lower rates for vans, or hitching a ride on the back of empty big rigs from whatever town they're in. The group sleeps in town plazas. Local townspeople and churches feed them.

In the evening, when the group settles in for the night, the kids play in playgrounds or dart among the crowd, chasing each other. Teenagers and adults play soccer using rocks as goal posts.

On Tuesday, the caravan had plans to board the freight train known as "The Beast" or sometimes "The Train of Death" in Arriaga to speed the journey north. It's a dangerous part of the journey, with death and injury only too possible from a precarious perch atop a rail car, and the group practiced boarding, one woman in a purple shirt slowly making her way up a parked train's ladder while the crowd below cheered her on. On another train car, men wearing backpacks steadily made their way up one by one. </s> (AP Photo/Felix Marquez). A Salvadoran girl waves her national flag as Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan march to call for migrants' rights and protest the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Hond...

(AP Photo/Felix Marquez). Central American migrants participating in the Migrant Stations of the Cross caravan or "Via crucis," set up camp at a sports center during the caravan's few-day's stop in Matias Romero, Oaxaca state, Mexico, late Monday, Apri...

(AP Photo/Felix Marquez). A child plays in an abandoned pool as the adults sleep, at a sports club where Central American migrants traveling with the annual "Stations of the Cross" caravan are camped out, in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Tuesday...

(AP Photo/Felix Marquez). A Honduran man carries a sleeping girl, as Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan march for migrants' rights and protest the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Honduran Presi...

(AP Photo/Felix Marquez). Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan march to call for migrants' rights and protest the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in Mat...

MATIAS ROMERO, Mexico (AP) - The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to people in a caravan of Central American migrants, and said the procession of 1,000 or so migrants that drew criticism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse.

Some migrants who awoke at the camp Wednesday said they would try their luck at requesting asylum in the United States, others in Mexico.

Elmer Gomez, 38, from eastern El Salvador, has been sleeping with his wife and three children aged 7, 13 and 14 on the soccer field under blankets as they wait for temporary transit visas from Mexico to continue to the US border. He hopes to request asylum and join relatives in New York.

"We didn't leave our countries just because we wanted to," Gomez said. "It's for the safety of our children."

Like many, he had joined the caravan - which was never expected to be so big, and never planned to go all the way to the border - because there was safety in numbers.

Now, the family faces the prospect of travelling solo; the caravan is scheduled to make its last stops this week at a migrants rights symposium in the central city of Puebla, and end in Mexico City.

"It seems a little complicated, with the robberies, kidnappings, and all of that," Gomez said. "It's a little scary, to travel without the caravan."

Organizer Irineo Mujica said, "We will try to find a better way of doing our caravans" in coming years. "We didn't anticipate, or want, a caravan of this size."

The caravan is an annual, symbolic event held around Easter each year to raise awareness about the plight of migrants and has never left southern Mexico, though some participants then continue north on their own.

Trump's strong criticism of the caravan and Mexico's supposed permissiveness in allowing it to proceed, have confused and befuddled families here, who deny they are a threat. Many say they never intended on going all the way to the United States after the end of the "Stations of the Cross" caravan. Some are seeking asylum in Mexico itself.

Even coordinators of the caravan seemed to misunderstand the debate in the U.S. when Trump's endorsed a "nuclear option" for pushing funding for his border wall through Congress. They told worried families Tuesday that the U.S. president had floated the idea of using a nuclear weapon against the caravan of mostly women and children who have fled violence in Central America.

The Mexican government said in a statement late Tuesday that its immigration policy "is not subject to pressure," but noted the caravan "began to disperse by decision of the participants."

It said 465 migrants had asked for transit visas and 230 had gotten them, and another 168 were likely to get some sort of visa to stay in Mexico.

Though the caravan is uncomfortable - the migrants cook meager, donated rations on fires and sleep under the stars - they said risks they have taken should be an indication of how unsustainable their circumstances are back home. Hondurans predominate in this year's caravan, but it includes families from Guatemala and El Salvador as well.

Sitting on a thin foam pad and trying to corral her sons, 2-year-old Jonathan and 6-year-old Omar, Gabriela Hernandez wondered aloud at what Trump must think of them.

"I see it as something really sad, because I don't understand how a child this age can make things difficult for him," said Hernandez, a 27-year-old who is two months pregnant.

She would like to get into the U.S., where she has a cousin in Houston. Crime in Honduras was so bad that she decided to embark on the difficult a journey across several international borders with two young asthmatic sons, the younger of whom is now sick and on antibiotics.

Late Tuesday, the first migrants began receiving documents from Mexican immigration authorities. Some give them 20 days to transit the country on their way to the U.S. border with the stated goal of applying for asylum. Others got papers in a first step toward a humanitarian Mexican residency visa for especially vulnerable people or a start to the application process for asylum in Mexico.

Mayra Zepeda, 38, of Honduras, said that once she gets documents to cross Mexico, she and her husband will continue their journey toward the border city of Tijuana. She said they hope to find better paying jobs there and aren't planning to try to cross into the U.S.

The couple left Honduras in December after incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez was declared the winner of a contested election. The factory where she made T-shirts for export closed due to the weeks of instability that followed the election, she said.

She and her family stopped in the Mexican town of Tapachula at the Guatemala border for three months and she worked in a restaurant. When the caravan came together there they saw it as a good opportunity to make a move with safety in numbers.

On Tuesday afternoon, she cooked a cauldron full of sliced squash and eggs over an open fire for the caravan's security team, volunteers who keep an eye on things.

"Honestly, I want to be Mexican," Zepeda said. "We're not going to cross. We're just going to stay here."

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. </s> A truck smuggling a group of Central American migrants crashed in southern Mexico leaving 23 dead and injuring 31 passengers.

The vehicle was traveling on a road connecting the cities of Ixtapa and Soyaló in the state of Chiapas when it allegedly experienced mechanical problems, according to investigators. A young girl was among the dead.

The truck veered out of its lane before flipping and crashing at about 6pm on Thursday, about 155 miles north of the Mexico-Guatemala border.

The southern state of Chiapas borders with Guatemala and has served as a strategic point for Central American migrants heading to the Mexico-United States border.

Thousands continue to descend upon Guatemalan towns and stream across the Mexican borders before continuing the dangerous trek northward in hopes of applying for and being granted asylum by the Trump administration.

The continuous stream of Central American migrants at the southern border entry sites has been a driving force behind President Donald Trump's agenda to demand that congressional leaders approve funding for his multi-billion dollar border wall.

President Trump claimed Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security is apprehending people on the Mexico-U.S. border at a pace that would reach 1 million by the end of 2019.

'We are on track to APPREHEND more than one million people coming across the Southern Border this year,' he said in a tweet.

Images of the accident showed dozens of victims laying on the road and next to the truck.

The victims were part of the latest migrant caravan seeking the American dream, fleeing the poverty and crime that has engulfed the Central America region.

The surviving victims were transported to two local hospitals where they received medical attention.

According to the Mexican Red Cross, the dead and injured victims were Salvadorean and Guatemalan nationals.

Authorities were not able to confirm the exact number of passengers involved in the accident.
Hundreds of Central American migrants taking part in a migrant caravan to the United States clash with riot police on the Guatemala–Mexico border.