#Pueblos sin fronteras: una carovana di persone migranti dal Messico agli Stati Uniti con l’idea di oltrepassare tutti insieme il muro con gli USA. Sono migliaia, non hanno autorizzazioni legali, ma stanno passando.
Trump Tweets Transform Immigrant Caravans Into Political Cause Célèbre
By KIRK SEMPLE
MEXICO CITY — It has become a regular occurrence, particularly around the Easter holiday: scores or even hundreds of Central American migrants making their way north by foot and vehicle from southern Mexico. They include everyone from infants to the elderly, fleeing violence and poverty in their homelands.
They travel in large groups — the current is one of the largest at about 1,200 participants — in part for protection against the kidnappers, muggers and rapists that stalk the migrant trail, but also to draw more attention to their plight. Some have the United States in mind, but many are only thinking as far as a new home in Mexico.
Called “caravans,” most of the journeys, which date back at least five years, have moved forward with little fanfare, virtually unnoticed north of the border with the United States. But tweets by President Trump have suddenly turned the latest caravan into a major international incident and the most recent flash point in the politics of immigration in the United States.
“Getting more dangerous,” the president tweeted on Sunday. “‘Caravans’ coming.”
On Monday, he warned that “our country is being stolen” by illegal immigration, blaming Democrats for weak border policies and urging Mexico to strengthen its border enforcement.
“Mexico has the absolute power not to let these large ‘Caravans’ of people enter their country,” he said in a tweet.
In interviews on Monday, the caravan’s organizers sounded frustrated, exhausted and dismayed.
“We are not terrorists,” said Irineo Mujica, Mexico director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras — People Without Borders — a transnational advocacy group that is coordinating the current caravan and has organized others in recent years. He was speaking by phone from Matías Romero, a town in the state of Oaxaca in southwest Mexico where members of the caravan had spent the previous two nights, sleeping in a park.
“We are not anarchists,” Mr. Mujica continued. “We try to help people to know their rights, things that we as human beings should be doing, try to advocate for human, sensible solutions.”
Late Monday, Mexican immigration officials began negotiations with caravan organizers about how to deal with the migrants.
Alex Mensing, project coordinator for Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said that the Mexican authorities had agreed to provide eligible migrants with humanitarian visas permitting them to remain in the country legally. Others would be provided with temporary transit passes, which usually last 20 days, allowing them to visit an immigration office and begin the process to legalize their status or travel to the United States border to apply for asylum or some other form of protection, Mr. Mensing said.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry, in a statement issued jointly late Monday, said the authorities had already deported 400 participants in the caravan since the event began more than a week ago, but confirmed that they were offering protections to the migrants “in cases where this is appropriate.”
“Under no circumstances does the Mexican government promote irregular migration,” the statement said.
Mr. Mensing said that processing details were still being worked out between government officials and the caravan organizers, but warned that should the process take too long, “it’s very possible that the caravan will reignite.”
The migrant group left the southern Mexican border town of Tapachula on March 25, at that point numbering about 700. Most of the participants were from Honduras and many of them said they were fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries, organizers said. Some say they were inspired to flee Honduras following the violent suppression of political protests that erupted after last year’s presidential election.
Over the past week, the group grew in size, to about 1,200 by the time it arrived in Matías Romero.
But organizers said that contrary to the vision of a migrant onslaught on America conjured by Mr. Trump, most participants do not intend to travel as far as the border of the United States.
“He’s trying to paint this as if we are trying to go to the border, and we’re going to storm the border,” Mr. Mujica said.
Mr. Mensing added: “We’re definitely not looking for some kind of showdown.”
In an interview Monday, before negotiations between the Mexican immigration authorities and the caravan organizers began, Mr. Mujica predicted that at most 10 percent to 15 percent of the participants would seek asylum at the American border.
He said he expected many others to drop out along the way, especially if the caravan continued along its intended route through the state of Puebla and on to Mexico City, with some participants applying for asylum or other forms of protection in Mexico.
In Puebla, Pueblo Sin Fronteras plans to hold workshops, led by volunteer lawyers, to teach migrants about options for legal protections in the region, including in Mexico and the United States.
“We don’t promote going to the United States,” Mr. Mensing said. “It’s a challenging place to seek asylum.”
In recent years, Mexico has become an increasingly attractive destination in its own right for Central Americans and others seeking sanctuary from economic hardship and violence in their home countries, even though advocates say the nation’s asylum program remains deeply flawed.
“We are trying — as Mexicans, as Americans — to find solutions,” said Mr. Mujica, a Mexican-American who holds dual citizenship.
In his Twitter posts on Sunday, Mr. Trump also asserted that many migrants trying to cross the border into the United States were seeking to “take advantage of” the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that has provided protected status to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the country as children. Mr. Trump announced last year that he was ending the program but was open to keeping it.
On Monday, advisers said that the president was also alluding to a perception, supposedly held by many Central American migrants, that as part of efforts to salvage DACA, Congress may soon agree to legislation that would permit unauthorized immigrants to remain in the United States.
But migrant-rights advocates, including coordinators of the latest caravan traversing Mexico, said these assertions were a White House invention.
“It’s laughable!” Mr. Mujica said. “Most of the people don’t even know what DACA is. They know that it’s almost impossible to get into the United States. They know that they’re deporting everyone.”
On Sunday, even Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs, Luis Videgaray, weighed in, apparently in response Mr. Trump’s tweets that accused Mexico of lax immigration enforcement.
“Every day Mexico and the U.S. work together on migration throughout the region,” he said on Twitter. “Facts clearly reflect this. An inaccurate news report should not serve to question this strong cooperation. Upholding human dignity and rights is not at odds with the rule of law. Happy Easter.”