A United States-bound caravan of thousands of mostly Honduran migrants has entered Mexico, despite increasing attacks from US President Donald Trump.
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| Thousands of Central American migrants are continuing their journey through Mexico to the US border. |
The migrants have defied threats by Mr Trump that he will close the US-Mexico border if the caravan advances and warnings from the Mexican Government that they risk deportation if they cannot justify seeking asylum in Mexico.
Footage showed the thousands of migrants walking down roads, many defiantly chanting "Yes we can" in Spanish as they pushed forward.
Dressed in riot gear, police arrived along a southern highway in several buses, ahead of the throngs of men, women and children marching north after they crossed the Guatemalan border.
An unidentified police officer told Reuters there were no orders to block the caravan.
"We're just making sure they pass safely and then we'll steer them" to a migrants shelter outside the city centre of Tapachula, about 32 kilometres north-west of the border, he said.
As a military helicopter circled overhead, migrants who said they were fleeing a toxic mix of violence, poverty and corruption in Central America wondered if police would seek to turn the caravan back.
Most said they felt safer advancing as part of a large group.
"We're going to make it, we're going to keep moving so long as they don't stop us," said Honduran Jaffe Borjas, 17, marching alongside a childhood friend at the head of the column that stretched far down the highway to the horizon.
They received help at every turn from sympathetic Mexicans who offered food, water and clothing.
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| Some migrants were offered free rides by Mexican locals. |
Hundreds of locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopped to let them clamber aboard.
'We are not criminals, we are workers!'
The multitude of migrants clogged the highway leading north from the border city of Ciudad Hidalgo in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, many breaking into song.
"If you send us back, we will return," a large crowd shouted in unison under the intense glare of the morning sun.
"We are not criminals, we are workers."
Mr Trump has threatened to halt aid to Honduras and Guatemala, and potentially close the US border with Mexico with the help of the military if the migrants' march is not stopped.
He took to Twitter to blame the courts for "asking the US to do things that are not doable".
Hundreds of migrants from the caravan applied for refugee status in Mexico in the southern city of Ciudad Hidalgo.
But a far bigger group forded the Suchiate River from Guatemala to the Mexican side individually and dozens at a time, and resumed the trek at first light, marching 10 abreast on the highway.
Mr Trump sees the caravan as a winning issue in the upcoming US mid-term elections.
After blaming the Democrats for "weak laws" on immigration a few days earlier, Mr Trump also said via Twitter that the "caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat party".
Mexico's Government has said throughout the past week that it would register the migrants and process requests for asylum.
Mexican authorities have also said that federal and Chiapas state authorities were also providing assistance, like food, medicine, and medical treatment, as well as legal counselling.
Those attempting to skip the process would face deportation, but the size of the caravan will test Mexico, which has sought help from the United Nations to manage the issue.
Encamped for two nights using backpacks for pillows and tents made of trash bags on a long bridge between Guatemala and Mexico, the migrant caravan began in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, last week and grew exponentially as it passed through Guatemala.
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| A group of migrants rests at the central park in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. |
On Saturday, Mexican immigration authorities only allowed some 640 migrants through the official border crossing on a bridge spanning the Suchiate River.
The slow pace of legal processing prompted thousands to cross the river illegally by raft or swimming, according to local officials and migrant organisers.
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