6,000 People Reportedly Join ‘Migrant Caravan of the Year’ En Route From Mexico to US

At least 4,000 migrants have set off for the US from southern Mexico, in what may turn into “the largest migrant caravan of the year”, according to the Associated Press.

The group, which mostly includes migrants from Central America, Venezuela and Cuba, left the Mexican city of Tapachula on Monday, with Reuters citing unnamed sources as saying that the caravan includes up to 6,000 people.

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Caravan organiser Luis Garcia Villagran said that the group represented various nationalities of people fleeing hardship in their home countries, including many from Venezuela.

“These are countries collapsing from poverty and violence. We strongly urge those who attend the summit […] to look at what is happening, and what could happen even more often in Mexico, if something is not done soon,” he stressed referring to the Summit of the Americas that kicked off in Los Angeles on Monday to deal with migration-related issues.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said last week that he would not attend the summit, in an apparent blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to use the gathering to expand regional cooperation on tackling migration.

Mexico, which has been used as a transit point by migrants from Central and South America as well as Haiti, deported over 114,000 foreign nationals during 2021, according to the country’s Ministry of Interior. Mexico’s refugee assistance service received over 131,000 applications for refugee status in the same year, more than 51,000 of them Haitian nationals.

The US, in turn, experienced a historically unprecedented flow of attempts to illegally enter the country last year, with over 1.7 million undocumented immigrants detected on the border with Mexico by Customs and Border Protection as of 30 September 2021 (the end of the fiscal year). Hundreds of thousands more entry attempts have been reported in the months since.

US Customs and Border Protection reported in April 2022 that the number of migrant arrivals along the US southern border with Mexico soared in March to its highest levels since 2000, standing at 221,303.

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Also in March, Biden told migrants not to come to US, insisting that there had been a surge in immigration "in the last two years", but that that the current rise "could be" worse. Former US President Donald Trump, for his part, argued at the time that Biden had "eroded" the successful system Trump had put in place, and that his policies "were working better than they have ever seen on the southern border".

The crisis on the US southern border began almost immediately after Biden took office in January 2021 and revoked Trump-era immigration policies, including the 45th president’s signature border wall and the “Remain in Mexico” programme. Other measures, including promises to “restore and expand” the US asylum system, and to potentially provide a “path to citizenship” for the 11+ million undocumented immigrants already residing in the US, led to a further surge in entry attempts.

Shortly before Biden's inauguration, caravans of migrants from Central America started moving towards the US southern border in a bid to seek asylum in America.