It is the largest caravan in over a year, may balloon to up to 15K people, activist warns
Shared from/by Social Links for Melissa Koenig and Social Links for Selim Algar
Border officials reported the highest number of migrant crossings ever, with a seven-day average of more than 9,600 in December, a Homeland Security official told CNN.
According to the New York Post, the massive migrant caravan making its way through Mexico to the US border is the largest in more than a year — as it was revealed more than 730,000 asylum seekers have been encountered at the southern border since October alone.
The hordes of migrants — primarily from Cuba, Haiti and Honduras — set off for the United States on Sunday, walking more than nine miles from the Mexican southern border city Tapachula to get to Alvaro Obregón.
An estimated 8,000 asylum seekers are en route, marking the largest migrant caravan approaching the US since June 2022.
Their Christmas Eve dinner comprised sandwiches, a bottle of water and a banana handed out by a local church, and they spent Christmas night sleeping on cardboard or plastic under awnings and tents.
But radical migrant rights activist Luis Garcia Villagran, who is accompanying the group, has warned that the caravan could grow to 15,000 people, carrying signs reading “Exodus from poverty,” by the time it reaches the border.
“We won’t stop — we’ll keep walking,’’ he vowed.
The influx of new migrants threatens to further strain the United States’ already overburdened Border Patrol.
There have been more than 730,000 migrant encounters at the besieged southern border since Oct. 1, US Customs and Border Patrol sources told Fox News reporter Bill Melugin — a staggering number that eclipses the entire population of Denver, the capital of Colorado.
December is currently on pace to set a monthly record in migrant encounters, Melugin added.
As many as 10,000 migrants have been apprehended each day at the southwest border this month, US Customs and Border Patrol officials have said. The total number of migrant encounters in December has already surpassed 200,000.
Last week, the US Customs and Border Patrol halted railway operations at international crossings into Texas to try to curb the massive migration into the country.
“CBP is continuing to surge all available resources to safely process migrants in response to increased levels of migrant encounters at the southwest border, fueled by smugglers peddling disinformation to prey on vulnerable individuals,” the agency said in a statement at the time.
“After observing a recent resurgence of smuggling organizations moving migrants through Mexico via freight trains, CBP is taking additional actions to surge personnel and address this concerning development, including in partnership with Mexican authorities.”
But Border Patrol agents say they have become overwhelmed by the surge in migrants, with the migrants outnumbering agents 200 to 1 at one Texas crossing.
The National Border Patrol Council said “agents are more than willing to sacrifice holidays to protect our fellow Americans, but what we are doing is not enforcing our laws; because of bad policy, our government is allowing cartels to control our border,” it said in a statement to NewsNation.
Federal officials are set to meet with their Mexican counterparts in Mexico City to stem the tide of migrants coming into the US.
The Mexican government has already said it is willing to help try to stop migrants from crossing its country, and White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador shared concerns about the “dramatic” increase, according to the BBC.
But López Obrador has said he is urging the Biden administration to ease up on its restrictive sanctions against the lefty governments of Cuba and Venezuela, where about 20% of the 617,865 migrants whom US agents encountered at the border between October and November were from.
He also said he wants to see the US dole out more money to struggling Latin American countries, which some migrants say they are fleeing in search of better economic opportunities.
With reports from the New York Post.
