Over the past month, a caravan that departed Honduras on foot has grown to include 7,000 people. Many of them had responded to a flyer inviting them to gather at a bus station in northwestern Honduras. “No nos vamos porque queremos, nos expulsa la violencia y la pobreza,” the flyer reads. We’re not leaving because we want to; violence and poverty have forced us out. Honduras is plagued by gang violence and political corruption. So these people fled north. The migrants are marching more than 1,000 miles through Mexico; currently, they’re approaching Mexico City from the south. The news media has circulated photos of the marchers clogging city streets and highways. The photos are striking. They show a peaceful mobilization of people in street clothes, many of them women and children, embarked on a long and haphazard journey through unfamiliar territory — and toward a perilous political end. In these photos, Trump sees a specter of Western decline. He sees the exact sort people who his contemptuous immigration policies are designed to repel. The U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is dispatching 800 U.S. soldiers to join 2,100 National Guard troops, plus regular patrol forces, stationed at the southern U.S. border. “To those in the Caravan,” Donald Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon, “turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!” If the caravan is indeed bound for the U.S.—currently, the itinerary is unclear—the march may culminate with an unprecedented standoff between thousands of immigrants from Central America and thousands of armed forces from the United States. The caravan’s size and singularity lends it an ominous significance: the marchers are in full force, but what kind of force? Where, exactly, are these people headed? What will they do once they get there? Why should anyone fear the long march’s potential outcomes? Worse yet, why shouldn’t they? Initially, left-wing activists—including the former legislator, Bartolo Fuentes—organized the exodus from Honduras as a rebuke to the country’s president, Juan Orlando Hernández, an embattled conservative leader who has overseen the country’s violent decay. Hernández has tried to recall the caravan, and the Mexican government now hesitates to stop its northbound progress. Inevitably, Donald Trump has identified the caravan as a left-wing mob dispatched to destroy the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump says the caravan’s ranks include “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” though none of the public reports about the marchers support Trump’s characterization. The migrant caravan is a right-wing fever dream, basically. For decades, conservatives have cited the Roman Empire’s collapse as history’s prohibition against welcoming too many immigrants into a Western superpower. The violent, unstoppable horde of Huns, Slavs, and Germanic tribesmen—the original “barbarians”—crossed the Rhine to ransack Gaul; and so the Honduran caravan traveling north through Mexico might breach, and ruin, the U.S. It’s impossible to predict how, and where, the caravan ends. Reportedly, the migrants have prepared to splinter along different routes into the U.S., and hundreds of marchers have already declared their intentions to remain in Mexico. There’s a great deal of uncertainty about the caravan that Trump has disregarded in his public pronouncements. The major congressional campaigns—including close races in two border states, Texas and Arizona—haven’t yet seized on the migrant caravan as a pivotal concern. It’s too late, perhaps, to refocus the midterms in their terminal phase. The week is filled with headlines about pipe bombs mailed to the president’s critics, including the billionaire George Soros, whom at least one right-wing figure has accused of sponsoring the caravan. Trump has seized upon the migrant caravan as right-wing counter-programming. “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!” Trump tweeted Monday. “Remember the Midterms!” Trump launched his political career with a fearful call to prohibit immigration from Mexico, and so the president was destined to make this sort of appeal his closing pitch to voters in the final weeks before the midterm elections. Immigration from Mexico is Trump’s signature concern, but his immigration policies have faltered against resistance from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress. In his 21 months as president, Trump has failed to secure Congressional funding for a border wall—the vivid, definitive priority of his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has, however, threatened to deport legal residents. He has subjected whole families, including young children, to a humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. In the course of humiliating so many immigrants, he has humiliated himself. Repeatedly, Trump has lost face, and lost his footing, in the national immigration debate. Trump’s fear-mongering about the migrant caravan is his last-ditch effort to prove the wisdom of immigration policies before the pivotal midterm elections. If the GOP loses the House, then Trump will lose his ability to dictate the terms of the immigration debate in Congress. Trump’s wall will never get built. Ironically, the border wall would hardly discourage the caravan itself. The 7,000-strong faction doesn’t intend to pour over the northern Mexican border in secret. They might attempt to enter the U.S. as refugees; in which case, the Trump administration will apply its general hostility toward refugees to vehemently oppose members of the caravan entering the U.S. Trump is stoking the caravan saga at a low point in the national morale. October 2018—the month before the midterm elections—has been one of the most dismal months of Trump’s presidency, filled with violence, diplomatic incompetence, and malaise. The national mood is fearful and sour. The country is uninviting. For all we know, the migrant caravan will turn back before it’s too late for them too.<doc-sep>Reports about a caravan of migrants coming to the U.S. from Central America have been featured prominently in the news cycle in past weeks, but the group is still far from the U.S. Trump said Wednesday the U.S. was going to send 10,000 to 15,000 troops to the border in anticipation of the caravan’s arrival. The U.S. military has already deployed nearly 1,000 troops along the U.S.-Mexican border, in areas where U.S. officials have determined the migrants and asylum seekers may try to enter. The military members are stationed around McAllen and Brownsville, Texas, San Ysidro, Calif., and Nogales, Ariz. How long could it take for the migrants to reach the U.S.? The primary caravan officials have been tracking was last reported to be near the city of Juchitan, Mexico, on Nov. 1, according to the Associated Press. That is in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, about 800 miles from the nearest crossing into the U.S. border. The caravan formed in Honduras in mid-October, CNN reported. It is covering about 20 to 30 miles each day, with some on foot and some riding in trucks and other vehicles but at a walking pace. There are currently about 4,000 migrants in that group, according to the AP. A second, smaller caravan is reportedly about 200 miles behind the first group. That is not the only other caravan making its way north. One such caravan tried to get into Mexico on Oct. 28, from Guatemala. They clashed with Guatemalan police, and one man died from a head injury, the AP reported. Many migrants have told news outlets they are fleeing poverty and gang violence. The journey through Mexico, which includes stretches through desert, is dangerous. Many migrants trying to make the journey from Central America through Mexico and ultimately to a U.S. border crossing never complete the trek, in fact, it’s been reported that the majority of past caravans never made it to the border. As many as 20,000 migrants are kidnapped every year by criminal gangs who are trying to collect ransom, according to the human-rights group Amnesty International. And as many as six in 10 migrant women and girls are raped during their journey, the group says. Mexico has reportedly offered temporary work permits and possibly other benefits to asylum-seeking caravan members on the condition that they remain in the country’s southern states. There are mixed reports on what the migrants may face from Mexican law enforcement as they head north, however. Some 153 migrants in the second caravan were detained Wednesday in the southern state of Chiapas, according to the AP. Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has said, “Mexico does not allow people to enter our territory illegally, and much less so violently.” Despite that official stance and the reported police presence along the caravans’ routes, many continue to make their way north.<doc-sep>If the migrant caravan didn’t exist, President Donald Trump might have needed to invent it. The existence of a group of thousands Central Americans pushing toward the US without papers — even if they are still hundreds of miles away — seems like something Trump’s GOP might create in a lab to unleash on the eve of the midterms. But the caravan is real. The migrants in it — mostly Hondurans (with some Guatemalans), half of whom are girls and women, many intending to seek asylum in the US — are real people. They made the decision to leave their home countries, assessing that the danger of leaving was outstripped by the danger of facing gang death threats or feeding a family on $5 per day. And they made the decision to go together, joining the caravan as it progressed, instead of alone like tens of thousands of their fellow Guatemalans and Hondurans (and Salvadorans) do every year. The caravan has provided an irresistible visual for Republican closing arguments about immigration. In Trump’s first TV ad of the presidential primary in 2015, he used an image of a mass of immigrants; fact-checkers revealed the picture was in fact taken in Morocco. Now, as he nears the midterm elections, Trump has the image he wanted all along — even as the actual caravan, still moving slowly through southern Mexico, appeared to be flagging by Thursday, closer to 4,000 people than the 7,000 estimated by the UN a few days earlier. The decision about 160 Honduran migrants made to travel as a group in the open to the US — and the decision thousands have made to join them en route — is the result of a situation that predates Trump. The United States and Mexico have worked to make the journey to the US less appealing to Central Americans, but many residents of the Northern Triangle find the prospect of eventual asylum in the US — however difficult it is to get there — more appealing than the insecurity they’re facing at home. The current wave of Northern Triangle migration raises hard questions about the distinction between economic and humanitarian migration, the US’s ability to process asylum seekers, and the role Mexico plays in the region. Those are emphatically not the questions that are coming up in the Trump-driven conversation about the caravan — which is using the sheer fact of a mass of people traveling northward to activate fears of an invasion by unknowable foreigners. 1) What is a migrant caravan? Over the past decade, there’s been a rise in the number of unaccompanied children and families crossing the US-Mexico border. Increasingly, they are people fleeing violence and insecurity, coming from the Northern Triangle of Central America — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Meanwhile, unauthorized border crossings of single adults, Mexicans, and people looking for seasonal work have greatly declined. The result is a change in the character of who is seeking to cross into the US: To get to the US-Mexico border, Northern Triangle emigrants have to get through Mexico, a journey that takes weeks. Under current US and international law, asylum seekers from Central America are allowed to apply for asylum either in Mexico or in the US. Many take the first option: Asylum applications in Mexico have gone up more than 1,000 percent since 2013, and most are from citizens of Northern Triangle countries. But applying for asylum in Mexico isn’t a walk in the park. Mexico has been accused of indiscriminate long-term detention of asylum seekers (exacerbated by a two-year backlog in processing applications), and some parts of Mexico aren’t safe for people who are already fleeing violence. The US has enlisted Mexico to apprehend Central American migrants before they get to the US. Some 950,000 Central Americans have been deported from Mexico over the past several years, and human rights groups have reported torture and disappearance by Mexican security forces. The crackdown has made an already dangerous journey more dangerous. The harder it is to get through Mexico without attracting attention from the authorities, the more that task falls to professional criminal organizations who might smuggle drugs alongside migrants or abuse migrants physically or sexually. The involvement of criminal organizations makes Mexico even more anxious to crack down. For some Central Americans, the solution to this problem is hypervisibility: traveling out in the open, as part of a large group of people that can’t simply be grabbed or disappeared. That’s the reason small human rights organizations have gotten people together, on occasion, in “caravans” — and the appeal to hundreds or thousands of migrants who’ve joined them in trying to get to the US. For some, it’s a way to call political attention to what they’re fleeing and what migrants have to endure; to others, it’s a desperate exodus; to some, it’s simply an opportunity that came along to hope for a better, safer life. 2) How did this caravan start? On October 12, 2018, a group of about 160 Hondurans set forth from the town of San Pedro Sula — which in the first half of the decade was often referred to as the “murder capital of the world” — in hopes of arriving to present themselves for asylum in Mexico or the United States. Seventy-five miles and two days later, the caravan was more than 1,000 strong, according to the estimates of Associated Press reporters. By October 15, the AP estimated about 1,600 Hondurans had amassed at the border with Guatemala. The earliest spokespeople for the caravan were a journalist and former leftist legislator named Bartolo Fuentes and his wife, human rights activist Dunia Montoya. The conservative government of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (with the help of friendly media outlets) has accused Fuentes of organizing the caravan to embarrass the Hernandez administration and promote instability. Fuentes has vehemently denied that he organized the caravan even in its early stages, and has laughed off any idea that he coordinated an exodus of 1,600 people.<doc-sep>The migrants were resting in a soggy sports field on the edge of town, a few miles from where Mexican families celebrated the Day of the Dead in the town cemetery. “They won’t shoot because we’re not criminals,” Erik Miranda, 39, said of Trump’s threat that U.S. troops would open fire if attacked with rocks. “I lived there for 15 years. I know the United States is a country of laws.” Miranda said he had been deported from America twice despite asking for asylum after being shot three times by the 18th Street gang in his native Honduras. “If the caravan reaches the border and enters, these people will have their day in court in front of a judge,” he said. Miranda said he would not try to enter the United States again but instead was hoping to reach Mexico City, where he planned to request asylum. “How horrible,” Daniela Carbajal, 27, said when told of Trump’s threat. “I’m not justifying throwing rocks but remember: We have children among us.” As she spoke, her 9-year-old son, Oscar, watched a video advising migrants of their rights, his head poking out of an orange tent Carbajal and her husband had just bought for 150 pesos. Inside, her 3-year-old daughter, Karla, was sound asleep.<doc-sep>
He blamed Democrats for the Central American migrants hoping to reach the U.S. As thousands of Central American children, parents, elderly and other adults intent on migrating to the United States awoke from a night sleeping on concrete in far-southern Mexico, President Donald Trump resumed tweeting about the migrant caravan as the fault of Democrats and a danger to the U.S. The caravan of migrants, mostly from Guatemala and Honduras, bedded down Sunday night on the concrete of a town square in Tapachula, Mexico, but awoke Monday determined to resume their arduous journey to the U.S. border still some 1,700 miles away. Overnight the group was joined by about 1,500 additional migrants who followed them up from Guatemala, organizers told ABC News. The total number of migrants now headed to the U.S. border is estimated to be about 7,200, United Nations Deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York on Monday. Haq said that the International Organization for Migration reported that migrants continue to stream into Mexico from Guatemala and "are likely to remain in the country for an extended period." Trump, meanwhile, in a series of tweets asserted that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners" are amid the crowd, for which he offered no evidence. He also again said Democrats are to blame for not working with his administration on immigration reform. "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! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally," Trump tweeted Monday morning. The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, dismissed Trump's claim as a diversion from other issues, particularly health care, ahead of the midterm elections. Efforts to reach a compromise in Congress on immigration reform stalled after Trump refused to back a bill that didn't include radical reductions to the current legal immigration system. The president went on to tweet that the Mexican federal police have been unable to stop the sea of humanity. The Mexican officers have been monitoring the caravan since the crowds breached a fence Friday at the Mexico-Guatemalan border and pushed past border patrol agents. "Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States," Trump tweeted Monday. "Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!" Trump offered no evidence that anyone from the Middle East is with the Central American migrants. An ABC News crew traveling with the group has also seen no evidence to support the president's claim. The president also blasted the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador -- the countries that make up the so-called "Northern Triangle" of Central America -- for failing to prevent the exodus of people from their countries. He threatened to cut off aid. "Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them," Trump tweeted Monday. As he left the White House Monday afternoon for a campaign rally in Houston for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Trump slammed the Central American countries during a gaggle with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. "We give them tremendous amounts of money ... Hundreds of millions of dollars," said Trump, adding that in return they give "nothing to us." He also criticized the Mexican government's handling of the caravan. "I guess it looks like the people are walking right through the middle of Mexico. So I'm not exactly thrilled there either," Trump said. Responding to a question from ABC News' Chief White House Correspondent Jon Karl on whether he has any evidence of terrorists infiltrating the caravan, Trump said: "Go into the middle and search. You're going to find MS-13 [gang members]. You're going to find Middle Easterners. You're going to find everything. Guess what? We are not allowing them in our country. We want safety." White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said "absolutely" there is credible evidence of Middle Easterners in the caravan of migrants. "Absolutely," Sanders said when asked about any evidence of Middle Easterners in the caravan.