The United Nations estimates the huge caravan currently making its way from Honduras toward the U.S.-Mexico border, is about 7,200 people strong. It's expected that, as seen with the last caravan earlier this year, many people may leave the group, or choose to stay in Mexico, before they get to the border. 
 
 The group has been getting a lot of attention, especially from Trump, leading some to believe this is a new phenomenon. 
 
 It's not. 
 
 When did these caravans begin? 
 
 The organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras (which means People Without Borders) has been assisting groups of Central American refugees and migrants for about 15 years, helping them to travel together to seek asylum in either Mexico or the United States. Pueblo Sin Fronteras describes itself as "a collective of friends" which provides "humanitarian aid and legal advice to refugees and migrants." 
 
 The annual caravan normally sets off during Holy Week. People move in larger groups as a form of security. One of the organization's stated goals is to protect the migrants from gangs, human traffickers, or corrupt law enforcement officials, who can more easily target vulnerable individuals travelling in small groups or alone. 
 
 The 2018 caravans 
 
 2018 has seen two large Central American caravans, and more recently, the emergence of a third smaller one. 
 
 The first left Tapachula, Mexico on March 25 (Palm Sunday) and reached Tijuana, Mexico, just south of the border in late April. Though it reportedly numbered more than 1,000 at one point, there were about 345 people in the group when it arrived in Tijuana. According to Pueblo Sin Fronteras at the time, about 200 planned to make asylum requests to the United States. 
 
 The large caravan currently making its way through Mexico left San Pedro Sula, Honduras on Oct. 12. In 2012, the Mexican think-tank Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice put San Pedro Sula at the top of its rankings of the world's 10 deadliest cities, with 159 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011. About 7,200 people are part of this caravan. 
 
 On Tuesday, a migrant shelter in Guatemala City said another, smaller caravan of about 1,000 people had formed and was also moving north from Honduras, having made it into Guatemala. 
 
 The larger caravan currently making its way north numbers in the thousands. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters) 
 
 Why so much attention this year? 
 
 Donald Trump made immigration a central plank of his 2016 election campaign, vowing, among other things, to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S. Shortly after some U.S. media began reporting about the March 2018 caravan, notably including Fox News, Trump started to tweet about the asylum-seekers. 
 
 Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the U.S. They laugh at our dumb immigration laws. They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL! —@realDonaldTrump 
 
 He threatened to cut off aid to the countries from which the migrants were coming, and once that final group of about 200-345 did make it to Tijuana, he tweeted that they would not be let in. 
 
 Despite the Democrat inspired laws on Sanctuary Cities and the Border being so bad and one sided, I have instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country. It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive! WALL —@realDonaldTrump 
 
 In recent days, the Mexican government, the group that organizes the caravans, and Trump Administration critics have speculated that Trump is paying extra attention to the current caravan — and using it to drum up anti-immigration sentiment — because of the Nov. 6 midterms. 
 
 Who makes up the caravans? 
 
 According to reporters who have joined the caravans to cover their story, they are made up of families; individual women or men travelling alone or with children; and unaccompanied minors. Though they may set off from one country, they are often joined along the way by migrants from neighbouring countries. The stated goal of many is to get away from the violence in their home country and/or to find a job. 
 
 "We only want to work," Ana Luisa España told AP journalists travelling with the current caravan. "And if a job turns up in Mexico, I would do it. We would do anything, except bad things." 
 
 The caravans include families, single parents with young children, and unaccompanied minors. (Adrees Latif/Reuters) 
 
 "We are all people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua," Denis Omar Contreras said. 
 
 Despite an assertion from Trump Monday that it is harbouring Middle Easterners trying to sneak into the U.S., the reporters say they have only encountered Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans. 
 
 How have other governments reacted? 
 
 By the time Trump began his tirade against Honduras for letting the caravan leave the country, it was already well into Guatemala. Still, the Honduran government deployed security forces to a main border point to try to prevent any more Hondurans from joining it. 
 
 The Guatemalan government detained a former Honduran lawmaker whom it said was helping to organize the caravan. Officials said he "did not comply with Guatemalan immigration rules" and would be deported back to Honduras. 
 
 Mexico has deployed about 700 National Police to the country's southern border, and has issued warnings stating that the migrants should not try to enter the country illegally. 
 
 Mexican officials are refusing to yield to demands from the caravan that they be allowed to enter the country en masse but are handing out numbers to those waiting to cross and allow them to enter in small groups. (Oliver de Ros/Associated Press) 
 
 Are the caravans illegal? 
 
 It is not illegal for anyone to seek asylum in another country. Asylum may be granted to any individual who meets the international definition of "refugee." 
 
 The United Nations 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol define a refugee as a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and who cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future "on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." 
 
 The principles of the Protocol, and thereby the Convention, were integrated into the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980. 
 
 What will happen to asylum-seekers at U.S. border? 
 
 According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, upon arrival at the border, the caravan asylum-seekers would surrender themselves to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. Providing they have not had a previous asylum claim rejected by the U.S., they are eligible to make an affirmative asylum request. The process can take months or even years. 
 
 According to a 2017 Reuters analysis of data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the unit of the U.S. Justice Department which oversees immigration courts, where an asylum seeker is from, and in what state he or she makes a claim, can greatly influence an immigration judge's decision. ||||| Central American migrants making their way to the U.S. in a large caravan stand in line waiting for medical aid in Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Central American migrants making their way to the U.S. in a large caravan stand in line waiting for medical aid in Tapachula, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the Guatemala-Mexico border, about 5,000 Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S.... (Associated Press) 
 
 TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — Thousands of Central American migrants hoping to reach the U.S. were deciding Monday whether to rest in this southern Mexico town or resume their arduous walk through Mexico as President Donald Trump rained more threats on their governments. 
 
 After blaming the Democrats for "weak laws" on immigration a few days earlier, Trump said via Twitter Monday: "Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!" He apparently sees the caravan as a winning issue for Republicans a little over two weeks ahead of midterm elections. 
 
 In another tweet, he blamed Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for not stopping people from leaving their countries. "We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," he wrote. 
 
 A team of AP journalists traveling with the caravan for more than a week has spoken with Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans, but has not met any Middle Easterners of the sort Trump suggested were "mixed in" with the Central American migrants. 
 
 It was clear though that more migrants were continuing to join the caravan. 
 
 José Anibal Rivera, 52, an unemployed security guard from San Pedro Sula crossed into Mexico by raft Sunday and walked up to Tapachula from Ciudad Hidalgo to join the caravan. "There are like 500 more people behind me," he said. 
 
 He vowed to reach the U.S. border, still nearly 2,000 road miles away at its closest point. "Anything that happens, even if they kill me, is better than going back to Honduras," he said. 
 
 Ana Luisa España, a clothes washer and ironer from Chiquimula, Guatemala, joined the caravan as she saw it pass through Guatemala. 
 
 'The goal is to reach the (U.S.) border," she said. "We only want to work and if a job turns up in Mexico, I would do it. We would do anything, except bad things." 
 
 Isis Ramirez, 32, a mother of three from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, awoke Monday morning on a square of sodden cardboard in Tapachula's town square, her swollen feet stretched out in front of her, wrapped in bandages applied by paramedics. Blisters had formed on her feet from the cheap plastic sandals she wears. 
 
 "There are more sick people. It's better that we rest today," she said. 
 
 Nearby, Julio Asturias, 27, a migrant from San Juan, El Salvador charged his cellphone from a dangling wire. 
 
 "I want to return to Arizona, and when I heard that the caravan was passing, I joined it," he said. He said he was deported a couple of months ago after police pulled him over for a burned-out tail light. 
 
 On Sunday thousands of migrants stretched out on rain-soaked sidewalks, benches and public plazas in Tapachula, worn down by another day's march under a blazing sun. 
 
 Keeping together for strength and safety in numbers, some huddled under a metal roof in the city's main plaza Sunday night. Others lay exhausted in the open air, with only thin sheets of plastic to protect them from ground soggy from an intense evening shower. Some didn't even have a bit of plastic yet. 
 
 "We are going to sleep here in the street, because we have nothing else," said Jose Mejia, 42, a father of four from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. "We have to sleep on the sidewalk, and tomorrow wake up and keep walking. We'll get a piece of plastic to cover ourselves if it rains again." 
 
 Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador suggested Sunday that the United States, Canada and Mexico work out a joint plan for funding development in the poor areas of Central America and southern Mexico. 
 
 "In this way we confront the phenomenon of migration, because he who leaves his town does not leave for pleasure but out of necessity," said Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1. 
 
 The migrant caravan, which started out more than a week ago with fewer than 200 participants, has drawn additional people along the way and it swelled to an estimated 5,000 Sunday after many migrants found ways to cross from Guatemala into southern Mexico as police blocked the official crossing point. 
 
 Later in the day, authorities in Guatemala said another group of about 1,000 migrants had entered that country from Honduras. 
 
 In interviews along the journey, migrants have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in Honduras. The caravan is unlike previous mass migrations for its unprecedented large numbers and because it largely began spontaneously through word of mouth. 
 
 Migrants received help Sunday from sympathetic Mexicans who offered food, water and clothing. Hundreds of locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopped to let them clamber aboard. 
 
 Civil defense officials for Mexico's southern state of Chiapas said they had offered to take the migrants by bus to a shelter set up by immigration officials about 5 miles (7 kilometers) outside Tapachula, but the migrants refused, fearing that once they boarded the buses they would be deported. 
 
 Ulises Garcia, a Red Cross official, said some migrants with injuries from their hard trek refused to be taken to clinics or hospitals, because they didn't want to leave the caravan. 
 
 "We have had people who have ankle or shoulder injuries, from falls during the trip, and even though we have offered to take them somewhere where they can get better care, they have refused, because they fear they'll be detained and deported," Garcia said. "They want to continue on their way." 
 
 Garcia said he had seen cases of swollen, lacerated and infected feet. But "they are going to continue walking, and their feet won't heel as long as they keep walking," he said. 
 
 Jesus Valdivia, of Tuxtla Chico, Mexico, was one of the many who pulled his pickup truck over to let 10 or even 20 migrants hop in at a time, sometimes causing vehicles' springs to groan under the weight. 
 
 "You have to help the next person. Today it's for them, tomorrow for us," Valdivia said, adding that he was getting a valuable gift from those he helped: "From them we learn to value what they do not have." 
 
 Passing freight trucks were quickly boarded by dozens of migrants, and straining tuk-tuks carried as many as a half-dozen. 
 
 Brenda Sanchez of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, who rode in Valdivia's truck with three nephews ages 10, 11 and 19, expressed gratitude to "God and the Mexicans who have helped us." ||||| About 80% of them are from Honduras. Many said they are fleeing poverty, but also political unrest and violence that followed the swearing in of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández after a highly contested election last year. The group often breaks into chants of “out with JOH.” They also chant “we aren't immigrants, we're international workers” and “the people united will never be defeated.” 
 
 The number of people who showed up to travel with the caravan caught organizers by surprise, and has overwhelmed the various towns they've stopped in to spend the night. Pueblos Sin Fronteras counted about 1,200 people on the first day. 
 
 When they get to the US, they hope American authorities will grant them asylum or, for some, be absent when they attempt to cross the border illegally. More likely is that it will set up an enormous challenge to the Trump administration's immigration policies and its ability to deal with an organized group of migrants numbering in the hundreds. 
 
 “If we all protect each other we'll get through this together,” Abeja yelled through a loudspeaker on the morning they left Tapachula, on Mexico's border with Guatemala, for the nearly monthlong trek. 
 
 Organizers like Rodrigo Abeja hope that the sheer size of the crowd will give immigration authorities and criminals pause before trying to stop them. 
 
 Organized by a group of volunteers called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, the caravan is intended to help migrants safely reach the United States, bypassing not only authorities who would seek to deport them, but gangs and cartels who are known to assault vulnerable migrants. 
 
 For five days now hundreds of Central Americans — children, women, and men, most of them from Honduras — have boldly crossed immigration checkpoints, military bases, and police in a desperate, sometimes chaotic march toward the United States. Despite their being in Mexico without authorization, no one has made any effort to stop them. 
 
 When the agent, who'd covered her uniform with an orange and white shawl, learned that the Central American migrants heading her way numbered more than 1,000, she took off for the restaurant across the street. 
 
 Taking a drag from her cigarette, a Mexican immigration agent looked out toward a caravan of migrants that grew larger with each step they took on the two-lane highway. 
 
 Migrants hitchhike along the side of the highway as they move toward the city of Mapastepec, Chiapas. 
 
 Sweating after miles of walking in more than 90-degree heat with her two kids, Karen said conditions in Honduras were so bad she decided to take a chance with the caravan. She declined to give her full name. 
 
 
 
 “The crime rate is horrible, you can't live there,” Karen told BuzzFeed News on the side of a highway near Huixtla, a town in Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. “After the president [was sworn in] it got worse. There were deaths, mobs, robbed homes, adults and kids were beaten up.” 
 
 Before setting out on the journey, the migrants were organized into groups of 10 to 15 people, and a leader was designated for each group. Five groups were then banded together in what organizers call a sector. While there are organizers from Pueblos Sin Fronteras leading the way, much of the effort to get to the US border is in the hands of the migrants themselves. 
 
 They've been organized into security, food, and logistics committees. Organizers say it's meant to help the migrants empower themselves. 
 
 Sandra Perez, 40, who's also from Honduras, is one of two women who belong to the security committee. It's not her first caravan: She has traveled with a procession of Central American mothers through Mexico in search of disappeared migrants. 
 
 “I like doing this, it makes me happy and I feel useful,” she told BuzzFeed News. 
 
 Not everyone is planning on crossing into the United States undetected. Migrants like Yonis, an Honduran man who declined to use his full name, are hoping to get their families to other parts of Mexico. He was able to legalize his status in Mexico and is hoping to get his wife and seven month old baby to the Mexican state Nuevo León. 
 
 "I have my life there," Yonis told BuzzFeed News. "We're all here fighting together, going to different borders, chasing an American dream that sometimes becomes a reality or doesn't for some." 
 
 Organizers estimate that about two-thirds of people are planing on crossing into the United States undetected or asking for some type of protection like asylum. 
 
 Twenty-nine-year-old Mateo Juan said the caravan was his third attempt at getting to the United States. Seven months ago, Mexican immigration officers pulled him off the bus. The same happened about a month ago. 
 
 He heard about the caravan in March when he arrived in Tapachula, the caravan's starting point. 
 
 “Going alone is risky. You're risking an accident, getting jumped by robbers, and even your life,” he told BuzzFeed News. “All of that, and then you don't get to the United States. The caravan is slower but you know you're going to get there safely.” 
 
 Still, there are no guarantees on the route or assurances that once they reach the US border they'll be able to cross undetected or be allowed to stay under some type of protection like asylum. 
 
 Alex Mensing, another organizer with Pueblos Sin Fronteras, made that point clear to the migrants before the group started out. He also stressed that everyone is responsible for their own food, water, and payment for vans or buses. Still, it's far cheaper than being assaulted or falling into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers. 
 
 “I'm here to work together with the people who had to leave their countries for whatever reason,” Mensing said through a loudspeaker. “We're fighting together. We're not here to give anyone papers and we're not here to give anyone food.” 
 
 Mensing said Pueblos Sin Fronteras isn't calling on people to make the trek, but if they're going to try to go through Mexico on the way to the United States, the group will help them. 
 
 The caravan propels itself forward using whatever way it can. Sometimes that means packing into the back of a truck, negotiating lower rates for vans, or hitching a ride on the back of empty big rigs from whatever town they're in. The group sleeps in town plazas. Local townspeople and churches feed them. 
 
 In the evening, when the group settles in for the night, the kids play in playgrounds or dart among the crowd, chasing one another. Teenagers and adults play soccer using rocks as goal posts. 
 
 On Tuesday, the caravan had plans to board the freight train known as “the Beast” or sometimes “the Train of Death” in Arriaga to speed the journey north. It's a dangerous part of the journey, with death and injury only too possible from a precarious perch atop a rail car, and the group practiced boarding, one woman in a purple shirt slowly making her way up a parked train's ladder while the crowd below cheered her on. On another train car, men wearing backpacks steadily made their way up one by one.
– Back in April, a "caravan" of immigrants marching across Central America toward the US border drew the attention of President Trump. Now comes round two. On Tuesday, Trump issued a warning to Honduras, where most of the immigrants in the latest group are from: "The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!" Background and developments: The caravan: This one started last week with about 160 people in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which the AP calls one of the most dangerous places in one of the most dangerous countries. As the group began walking out of the country, others joined, and most estimates put the current number near 2,000. The Washington Post, however, notes that volunteers suggest it's closer to 3,000, bigger than April's group. The path: The group already has crossed the border into Guatemala, after police in the latter country didn't do much to stop them, reports the Guardian. Then it will be on to Mexico and the US, though if history holds, many of the migrants will break off and remain in Central America. Unlike in April, Mexico has warned that this time it will turn back anyone with improper visa requirements.