October 21, 2018

Watch 5,000 Central American Migrants Walk to the United States

The caravan left the southern Mexico border on Sunday and headed north.

Central American migrants head for the United States. Ivan Sanchez/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

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On Sunday, thousands of Central American migrants left Mexico’s southern border and marched north as they made their way to the United States to seek asylum. The caravan, which has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump, began in Honduras on October 13 when roughly 3,000 migrants left the town of San Pedro Sula. By Sunday morning, their numbers had reached at least 5,000. 

Thousands used rafts to illegally cross the Suchiate River that borders Guatemala and Mexico on their trek before eventually re-forming with the mass migration. At one point on Saturday, Mexican officials blocked a group of 1,000 migrants trying to enter the country’s southern border. 

This spring, a caravan organized by the migrant advocacy and support group Pueblos Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders), made a similar trek.

Trump has seized on the caravan in campaign rallies this week, calling the migrants “very bad people,” blaming Democrats for the migration, requesting Mexican officials stop the migrants in their tracks, and threatening to shut down the US-Mexico border.

“These are some bad people coming through. These aren’t babies, these aren’t little angels coming into our country,” Trump said on Friday at the White House.

In fact, many of the migrants are small children. Here’s a look at the group’s journey.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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