Guatemala: Members of a caravan of migrants that have been travelling from Honduras toward the United States, infuriating President Donald Trump, overran a border gate in northern Guatemala on Friday and broke through another gate leading to Mexico before coming to a halt in the face of a large phalanx of Mexican riot police.
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| Migrant children bound for the US-Mexico border wait on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala |
After a tense hour-long stand-off, during which migrants hurled objects at the police, including rocks and shoes, the police fired canisters of tear gas, forcing the migrants to retreat.
At least six police officers were wounded in the confrontation, officials said.
After the violence had subsided, however, leaders of the caravan organised the migrants into orderly lines for processing by Mexican migration officials. By mid-afternoon, the migrants were gradually being allowed into Mexico, where they boarded buses, some to a migration centre in the city of Tapachula for processing and others to a government shelter, said Manelich Castilla Craviotto, general commissioner of the Federal Police. It remained unclear how long it would take the authorities to register all the new arrivals.
The clash came on the eighth day of the caravan, a procession of migrants that formed in northern Honduras and, travelling on foot and by vehicle, made its way north through Guatemala, many intending to reach the United States.
The migrants, most from Honduras, say they are fleeing economic misery and violence in their homelands.
The caravan's size has multiplied during its journey and by some estimates numbers as many as 4000 people.
Throughout the week, Trump has railed against the caravan on Twitter, threatening Honduras and other Central American nations with the suspension of foreign aid unless they stop the northward march. He also said that if Mexico failed to block the migrants' course, he would deploy the US military to the south-west border.
In an apparent attempt to rally his base, Trump, in his Twitter posts, has invoked the same kind of anti-immigrant fears he used during his 2016 campaign, warning of an "onslaught" of criminals.
The images of the aggressive behaviour of some members of the caravan at the Guatemala-Mexico border may fuel these concerns and rhetoric.
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| Mexican federal police in riot gear receive instructions at the border crossing between Guatemala and Mexico, in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, |
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was in Mexico City on Friday meeting with Mexican officials, said the violence was evidence that the caravan was "an organised effort to come through and violate the sovereignty of Mexico".
"This is a large group of people that are putting women and children in front of the caravan to use as shields as they make their way through," he said.
Pompeo met his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray, and the caravan was the issue that preoccupied them.
"In Mexico we have the rule of law, and we shall apply, enforce the law," Videgaray told reporters. "But there will also be a humanitarian way that we will think about the migrant in the first place."
He said Mexico was concerned with "the respect to human rights, the dignity of people, as well as the protection of this migrant group, particularly those that are most vulnerable," children, the elderly and pregnant women.
During the week, in anticipation of the caravan's arrival at the southern border, the Mexican government deployed hundreds of National Police personnel there and issued a series of statements warning the caravan's participants against trying to enter the country illegally.
According to Mexican authorities, migrants with valid documents and visas would be allowed in. Those seeking asylum or some other form of protection can request it but must wait in a migration centre for up to 45 days, officials said, and those who try to enter illegally will be detained and deported.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in response to a request from the Mexican government, said it was adding personnel in southern Mexico to help process migrants seeking asylum.
Members of the caravan began arriving in recent days in Ciudad Tecún Umán, a Guatemalan border city, where they slept in migrant shelters and in plazas and parks.
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| Migrants tired of waiting to cross into Mexico, jumped from a border bridge into the Suchiate River, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala |
By Thursday night, more than 1000 members of the caravan had congregated in the city, and word spread among the group that they would try to cross the border en masse at midday on Friday.
On Friday morning, however, Mexican officials, including the country's ambassador to Guatemala, circulated through the crowds of migrants, appealing for order and inviting them to present themselves at the border one by one, where they would be processed by migration authorities.
The migrants defied the request, however, and about midday local time, the throng — now numbering in the thousands —moved toward the border crossing, coming to a stop at the closed Guatemalan border fence. After an hour of rowdy yelling and chanting, some migrants managed to push open the fence and hundreds surged through behind them, overwhelming a small contingent of Guatemalan riot police officers.
The crowd then rushed across a long bridge that crosses the Suchiate River and connects Ciudad Tecún Umán with the Mexican town of Ciudad Hidalgo, coming to a stop at a high metal fence blocking the way into Mexico. Within short order, however, the migrants had forced open that fence, too, and pushed forward until they were toe-to-toe with the Mexican riot police, who did not budge.
"We don't have the right to go into Mexico, but we have to do it because our country is undergoing economic collapse," said Oscar Danilo Garcia Rodriguez, 43, a Honduran migrant. "There's no work, there's no money, there's nothing."
After the crowd had retreated, settled down and formed into lines, the Mexican authorities began allowing people to pass through a corridor of riot police to the waiting buses.
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