Migrant Caravan Detained in Southern Mexico

It’s amazing what a little friendly persuasion will do.

Mexican military police stopped and turned back a caravan of about 2,000 migrants in Southern Mexico who were headed for the U.S. border.

The Trump administration had threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods unless they did something to stop the surge of people streaming in caravans toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Up until that point, Mexico had been assisting the migrants in crossing Mexico and making it to our borders. But lately, the Mexican government has changed its tune.

Reuters:

Around 500 members of Mexico’s National Guard military police in helmets and tactical vests blocked the highway on both sides, according to a Reuters witness, and some pursued migrants who fled into neighboring fields.

Officials from Mexico’s national immigration institute detained most of the group, putting them on buses back to Tapachula. About 150 migrants decided to return on foot.

Activist Irineo Mujica of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, who accompanied the migrants, said only a small group opted to walk back on their own.

“The vast majority were taken to Tapachula, the caravan was dismantled,” he said in a video documenting the incident.

The agreement struck last June is having a dramatic effect.

The Mexican government in June struck a deal with the United States vowing to significantly curb U.S.-bound migration in exchange for averting U.S. tariffs on Mexican exports.

Arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border fell in September for the fourth month in a row, after record high crossings this Spring, and the Trump administration credited cooperation from Mexico and Central American countries for the sustained drop.

It’s not just Central Americans who are trekking through Mexico to reach the U.S. border.

Associated Press:

Hundreds of African migrants, in particular, have been stuck for months in Tapachula, where they say immigration authorities have stalled on giving them residency or transit papers. Almost all of them want to seek asylum in the United States, rather than stay in Mexico.

The migrants have engaged in scuffles with police at the Tapachula immigration offices in recent weeks. Mexico says they can stay in southern Mexico, or leave by the southern border, but the migrants want documents that will allow them to reach the northern border.

Mexico frequently repatriates, by plane, migrants from countries such as Cuba and Honduras.

However, deportations are more difficult for migrants from faraway countries in Africa, some of which lack the infrastructure to handle repatriations.

Immigrant activists have adopted tactics designed to disrupt order at the border and advance a political agenda that seeks to embarrass American authorities by showing their inability to deal with the surge in people who all show up at the border demanding entry.

That these “humanitarians” do this using the bodies of migrants is despicable. They have no concern if people die trying to reach our borders, as long as that death advances their political agenda. It doesn’t matter if they want open borders or no borders, they had to be stopped. And Mexico and the U.S. are finally doing so.