Migrant caravan heads North as Texas, Mexico navigate imminent mass deportation

by WorldTribune Staff, November 22, 2024 Real World News

With two months of the Biden-Harris open border remaining, a group of some 1,500 migrants, mainly from Central and South America, formed a caravan in southern Mexico and headed for the U.S. southern border, a report said.

The latest caravan hopes to reach the U.S. before inauguration day. / Video Image.

“Some say they are hoping to reach the United States before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, thinking it might be more difficult after that,” The Associated Press reported on Wednesday. “They began walking from Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, where thousands of migrants are stranded because they do not have permission to cross further into Mexico.”

It is over 1,770 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Tapachula to the nearest border crossing at Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

“It is going to be more difficult” after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. “That’s why we are going — in hopes of getting an appointment quicker, so we are able to cross before he takes office,” said Yotzeli Peña, 23, a migrant from Venezuela told the AP. “That would be easier.”

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The Biden-Harris initiated Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One App takes about 1,450 appointments each day. The Biden-Harris administration encourages migrants to get an appointment before they show up at the border. The service originally was available only in northern and central Mexico.

“By extending the app south to Tapachula, officials hoped it would stem the rush north. But some migrants still want to be close to the border so that if they do get one of the cherished appointments, they can get to it quickly and not risk missing it,” the report said.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to end the app and carry out mass deportations.

Mexico’s newly-elected leftist president, Claudia Sheinbaum, told the public that her government is prepared to handle an influx of illegal migrants sent back by the Trump administration.

During a Thursday press conference, Sheinbaum cautioned that immigrants should not be treated as “criminals” and affirmed that her administration is prepared to take in masses of Mexican nationals who may be deported back to the country.

“In the event of deportations, we will receive Mexicans, and we have a plan for that,” Sheinbaum said. “However, we will work beforehand to show that our nationals who are on the other side of the border do not have to be deported, as they actually benefit the U.S. economy.”

There are an estimated 17 million illegal migrants currently living in the U.S. and roughly four million of them are Mexican nationals, according to Pew Research.

Authorities in Texas say they are prepared to offer Trump 1,400-acres of land along the U.S.-Mexico border to build detention facilities for illegal aliens.

In a letter, the Texas General Land Office said the land could be used to build facilities for “processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.”

The letter, published online and sent to Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, notes that the owner of the recently purchased land had refused to allow a border wall to be built there and “actively blocked law enforcement” from accessing it.

“Now it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We can very easily put a detention center on there,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in an interview with Fox News.

Buckingham said she was “100% on board with the Trump administration’s pledge to get these criminals out of our country”.

The Democrat governors of three southern border states – California, Arizona, and New Mexico – have said they will not aid mass deportations.

“Local and state officials on the frontlines of the Harris-Biden border invasion have been suffering for four years and are eager for President Trump to return to the Oval Office,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

“President Trump will marshal every lever of power to secure the border, protect their communities, and launch the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrant criminals in history.”


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