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President Trump, who claimed a "crisis" forced him to order National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, said Thursday that a border-bound caravan of some 1,000 migrants fleeing violence in Central America had broken up inside Mexico.
The president has been tweeting about the caravan since Sunday after the Fox News program Fox & Friends and other media outlets reported a group of more than 1,000 migrants was traveling to the U.S. border and Mexican authorities were doing little to stop them.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s Senate has passed a resolution calling for the suspension of cooperation on illegal immigration and drug trafficking in retaliation for Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to the border.
Presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya went further, saying Mexico should limit anti-terrorism cooperation until the National Guard was withdrawn.
Others took Trump’s move with a grain of salt. The newspaper El Heraldo said in a headline Thursday “U.S. deploys National Guard ... tin soldiers.”
The caravan at the heart of the latest border flareup was marching northward to draw attention to their plight, with most heading to official U.S. border crossings to apply for asylum and some hoping to break off and cross illegally.
Under pressure from both countries, the migrants, who were largely traveling as a group as protection against criminals, will disband in Mexico City after some of the hundreds of migrants requested documents to stay in Mexico.
A girl lies awake as Central American migrants traveling with the annual "Stations of the Cross" caravan sleep at a sports club in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Tuesday, April 3, 2018. The caravan of Central American migrants that angered U.S. President Donald Trump was sidelined at a sports field in southern Mexico with no means of reaching the border even as Trump tweeted another threat to Mexico Tuesday. Felix Marquez/Associated Press
Mexico, in turn, announced it deported about 400 of the migrants, while also processing requests from migrants for documents to stay in the country.
In his first tweet of the day Thursday, Trump noted the feared caravan invasion was no longer a threat, then shifted the focus to illegal drug smuggling.
"The Caravan is largely broken up thanks to the strong immigration laws of Mexico and their willingness to use them so as not to cause a giant scene at our Border," he tweeted. "Because of the Trump Administrations actions, Border crossings are at a still UNACCEPTABLE 46 year low. Stop drugs!
While some in the caravan will drop out, others will continue on their own to the U.S. to apply for asylum, Alex Mensing, an organizer with the advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, told The Arizona Republic.
The migrant caravan, which left Chiapas, Mexico's most southern state, on March 25 is "still together, arranging documents with MX immigration, next stop Puebla, then meet with gov agencies, then many will go separate ways to apply for asylum in MX or USA," Mensing told the newspaper by text.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...s-up-before-national-guard-arrives/488683002/
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