By Mariana Morales, Mary Beth Sheridan · The Washington Post (c) 2024
TAPACHULA, Mexico – At the stroke of midnight Wednesday, around 1,000 migrants set off on foot from this southern Mexican city, heaving backpacks, clutching water bottles, balancing toddlers on their shoulders. Everyone wanted to reach the U.S. border – preferably before Donald Trump is sworn in, on January 20.
“When Donald takes office, it’s going to be more complicated,” said Jose Daniel, 33, a Venezuelan autoworker.
It was the ninth big caravan to leave Mexico’s border region with Guatemala since early October. Yet not one has gotten close to the U.S. border, 1,000 miles to the north. Indeed, no major caravans have reached the United States in nearly six years. But while caravans have become a ho-hum issue in Mexico, they continue to alarm American politicians – and one in particular.
On Nov. 25, Trump threatened to slap 25-percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada if they didn’t harden their borders. He cited the appearance of a caravan “coming from Mexico, composed of thousands of people.” It “seems to be unstoppable in its quest to come through our currently Open Border,” he wrote on his platform, Truth Social.
That caravan was broken up days later, more than 800 miles from the United States.
What explains the disconnect between what’s happening in Washington and in southern Mexico? Here is the little-known story of how Mexico has tamed the caravans – and why they’ll probably continue anyway.
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How migrant caravans became a crisis
One of the first significant migrant caravans, comprised mostly of Hondurans, formed in 2017 and took nearly a year to reach Tijuana, on the California border, according to a study by the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. It drew little attention.
In April 2018, however, conservative U.S. media zeroed in on another caravan of about 1,500 people originating in Honduras, calling it a symbol of out-of-control migration. As it moved through Mexico, Trump deployed National Guard to the border. He accused Democrats of encouraging such events. “They want people to pour into our country unchecked,” tweeted the then-president.
Six months later, Americans were startled by a caravan that swelled to as many as 7,000 migrants and crossed Mexico. The video images were powerful: a massive stream of men, women and children, heading northward on foot. The march occurred just weeks before the U.S. midterm election, and Trump used the event to highlight his promises to attack irregular migration.
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How Mexico has stopped caravans
Since 2019, Mexico has used a combination of carrots and sticks to dissolve the caravans. It’s granted migrants “humanitarian visas” or other documents allowing short-term stays, offered some of them jobs, and accepted more than a half-million applications for asylum in Mexico.
President Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted on Nov. 27 that she’d explained Mexico’s migration strategy to Trump following his tariff threat. “I let him know that caravans aren’t arriving at our northern border, because we take care of them in Mexico,” she wrote, while also emphasizing her government’s respect for human rights.
Yet Mexico has taken an increasingly tough stand on caravans. “You almost never hear anymore about humanitarian visas,” said the Rev. Conrado Zepeda, an academic and former director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Mexico.
Josué Goméz, of the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, said that caravans have become caught up in a broader immigration crackdown that’s resulted in around 1 million detentions in Mexico this year. At the heart of that policy is the “carousel” – a system in which agents detain undocumented migrants at roadblocks or pull them off trains in central and northern Mexico, and bus them to the south, where they’re released. They typically start their northward quest again but often wind up going round and round – apprehended in the north and freed in the south.
With their hundreds or thousands of people, caravans challenge that policy. Immigration agents try to break the caravans into smaller groups, which can be more easily detained, Goméz said. “They peel off one group after another,” he said.
Sometimes agents persuade migrants to abandon the caravans by promising humanitarian visas, which are then not delivered, he said. On some occasions, security forces have prevented migrants from stopping to rest in parks or plazas, he said. Those who are weaker become exhausted and fall behind the main group.
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Why migrants keep forming caravans
Goméz said his group had lost count of the small caravans – 50 to 150 people – that have left Tapachula.Lately, the caravans have grown in size – perhaps because of a sense of urgency in reaching the border before Trump takes office, or possibly because of mounting frustration over the difficulty of getting transit visas or processing asylum claims in the southern city, he said.
Given the obstacles, why do migrants keep joining caravans?
In many cases, the foreigners want to protect themselves as they pass through dangerous stretches of highway, where criminal groups might kidnap and extort smaller groups. “It’s a safe way to reach the city,” said Ana Velarde, a 23-year-old cashier from Peru, a member of the latest caravan, who said her immediate goal was to reach Mexico City.
Tonatiuh Guillén, who led Mexico’s immigration service in 2018-19, said migrants often form caravans as a way to acquire some benefit, such as temporary visas, from authorities seeking to avoid violent confrontation. Many caravans have no illusions about getting to the U.S. border; forming a group serves as a “negotiating strategy” for short-term goals, he said.
Neyri Samaya, 41, a Venezuelan saleswoman traveling with her husband and three children, said that the caravan would break up immediately if authorities granted them temporary visas. “Everyone would seek his or her own way to travel, maybe by bus, and we wouldn’t be blocking the streets,” she said, suggesting the leverage the migrants could use. “Imagine if all these people decided to stop in one town. That doesn’t benefit anyone.”
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Why Mexico still worries about caravans
The Mexican government learned its lesson after the images of the caravans on American TV screens blew up into a bilateral political crisis in 2018. The following spring, Trump threatened tariffs unless Mexico curbed migration. It swiftly obliged, sending tens of thousands of National Guard to the border.
Last December, when detentions at the U.S. border soared to record levels, a high-level Biden team pressed Mexico to take more drastic action to deter migrants. By August 2024, border apprehensions had dropped by around 75 percent, due to Mexico’s enforcement and Biden’s moves to tighten access to asylum.
Trump’s proposed 25-percent tariffs would probably push export-dependent Mexico into a recession. Sheinbaum is eager to avoid an economic downturn; there’s little likelihood she would allow a major caravan to cross Mexico at this sensitive time. Trump praised his “wonderful” call with her.
But Mexico is caught in a difficult position. Many of those crossing its territory are desperate people, fleeing organized-crime violence, civil unrest or economic collapse, from countries ranging from Venezuela to Haiti.
And Mexico’s control over the migration flow could also turn into a negotiating tactic.
“President Sheinbaum’s position is not to generate more problems on the border or in relations with the United States,” Guillén said. “But let’s see. The political moment could change.”
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Sheridan reported from Mexico City. Valentina Muñoz Castillo contributed to this report.