Migrants making way through Mexico

TAPACHULA, Mexico — Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 2,000 Central American migrants swam or rafted across a river separating the country from Guatemala, re-formed their mass caravan in Mexico and vowed to resume their journey toward the United States.

The migrants, who said they gave up trying to enter Mexico legally because the asylum application process was too slow, began pouring into the Mexican border city of Tapachula on Sunday, setting up impromptu camps in public parks under a heavy rain.

Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador adopted a sympathetic tone toward the caravan on Sunday, promising to provide people with work permits in a speech to supporters in Tuxtla-Gutierrez, about 180 miles north of Tapachula.

They earlier voted by a show of hands in Ciudad Hidalgo to continue north en masse, then marched to the bridge crossing the Suchiate River and urged those still on it to join them.

"We are going to reach the United States," said Erasmo Duarte, a migrant from Danli, Honduras, despite warnings by US President Donald Trump.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Elko, Nevada, kept up his rhetoric against the migrants and suggested the caravan was politically motivated.

"The Democrats want caravans, they like the caravans. A lot of people say 'I wonder who started that caravan?'" he said.

Last week, Trump threatened to cut aid to the region, deploy the military and close the US-Mexican border if authorities did not stop them.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and his Guatemalan counterpart Jimmy Morales continued Trump's theme after they met in Guatemala on Saturday.

"This migration has political motivations," said Morales, "which is violating the borders and the good faith of the states and of course putting at risk the most important thing, people."

Hernandez also deplored "the abuse of people's needs" for "political reasons".

"Without a doubt, we have a lot to do so that our people can have opportunities in their communities," he said.

The decision to re-form the migrant caravan capped a day in which Mexican authorities again refused mass entry to migrants on the bridge, instead accepting dozens of women and children. Authorities also handed out numbers for people to be processed in a strategy seen before at US border posts when dealing with large numbers of migrants.

But many became impatient and circumvented the border gate, crossing the river on rafts, by swimming or by wading in full view of the hundreds of Mexican police manning the blockade on the bridge. Some paid locals the equivalent of $1.25 to ferry them across. They were not detained on reaching the Mexican side.

Sairy Bueso, a 24-year-old Honduran mother of two, was among those who abandoned the bridge and crossed via the river. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter Dayani, who had recently had a heart operation, as she got off a raft.

"The girl suffered greatly because of all the people crowded" on the bridge, Bueso said. "There are risks that we must take for the good of our children."

Guatemala has organized a fleet of buses to take Hondurans back to their country and more than 300 people have taken up the offer.

AP — AFP — REUTERS