Hundreds of members of a new migrant caravan pushed their way past Honduran border police and into Guatemala Wednesday. The group claims to be heading to the United States.
“There is no work here, the government has abandoned us,” 26-year-old Honduran Antony Gomez said in an AFP article published by Yahoo News. Other migrants also expressed desire for work, making their quest that of economic migration.
Approximately 400 men, women, and young children made their way to the northern Honduran town of San Pedro Sula on Tuesday, the news agency reported. By Wednesday, the group refused to register with migration services in Honduras and began pushing their way past a line of police to cross into Guatemala — the first step on a journey that would take them into Mexico and on to the United States.
AFP reports police allowed some adults through but kept families with small children from crossing.
This is not the first journey for some, The Washington Post reported Wednesday night.
Honduran 18-year-old Walter Martínez told the reporter he made the journey into the United States where he lived with his family in Houston until being deported in November. The newspaper did not say why the Honduran teen was removed.
The Associated Press reported seeing about 20 Honduran migrants being driven back to the border after they failed to register with Guatemalan immigration officials.
The Post reported that the Department of Homeland Security deployed dozens of U.S. federal agents and investigators to Guatemala to provide advice to the national police and immigration officials. The move was part of a security agreement negotiated under the Trump Administration’s efforts to curb mass migration to the U.S. that peaked in May 2019.
This week, Honduras’ top law enforcement official Julian Pacheco claimed the caravans were being funded and manipulated by “perverse” parties and promised to unmask them in the coming days. Pacheco’s statements about the new caravan sound similar to a revelation made by Mexico’s government in June 2019 when it announced they froze 26 accounts linked to groups tied to previous caravans.
Mexico is also being pressured to stop the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S. border.
Breitbart Texas reached out to DHS and CBP officials for a reaction to the developments. An immediate response was not available.
During Fiscal Year 2019, which ended on September 30, 2019, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 14,000 Honduran migrants who illegally crossed the border from Mexico, according to CBP reports. Those included 1,587 unaccompanied minors, 6,218 migrant families, and 6,234 single adults.
They were joined in crossing the border illegally by more than 18,000 Guatemalans, nearly 6,400 Salvadorans, and more than 47,000 Mexicans. More than 40,000 of the Mexican migrants were reported as single adults.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
ldefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.