Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan march to call for migrants' rights and protest the policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in Mat...

MATIAS ROMERO, Mexico (AP) - The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to people in a caravan of Central American migrants, and said the procession of 1,000 or so migrants that drew criticism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse. Some planned to head to the central Mexican city of Puebla, where the activists who organized the caravan have convened a legal clinic to help the Central Americans seek asylum or visas, whether in Mexico or the United States. Politifact purported to fact-check “Trump’s fresh statement that ‘caravans’ are coming our way, presumably from south of the Texas-Mexico border.” But the only question there is the plural; there is no doubt that a Honduran caravan is on its way. “We didn’t anticipate, or want, a caravan of this size.”

The caravan is an annual, symbolic event held around Easter each year to raise awareness about the plight of migrants and has never left southern Mexico, though some participants then continue north on their own. "We're trying to find the best ways to manage migration flows in a way that it's respectful both to the laws of the United States and Mexico, and we have seen the numbers of people in the caravan by their own will drastically reduce," Gutiérrez says. Hundreds of men, women and children from Central America were stuck on Tuesday in the town of Matias Romero in the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca awaiting clarification of their legal status after officials began registering them. The news organization’s claim runs counter to the reporting of every other major outlet including reporting by Spain’s El Diario, Univision, Latin America’s La Prensa Grafica, Telesur TV, Mexico’s El Universal, all reporting that the ultimate goal of the members of the caravan was to reach the U.S. and request asylum or other protected status.
The Viacrucis del Migrante caravan of mostly Central American migrants is stopped by Mexican authorities.