The 200 mile walk in vain: Caravan of 8,000 Honduran migrants is broken up and bused BACK to Honduras after violent clashes with Guatemalan border forces - but some plow on in hope new administration will give them US asylum
A caravan of almost 8,000 migrants, who walked around 200 miles from Honduras into Guatemala last week have dissipated after they were met by security forces wielding batons and firing tear-gas.
Guatemalan forces put on dozens of buses to send the majority of the caravan back home to Honduras following a series of clashes over the last three days. But on Tuesday, small groups could be seen pushing on to Mexico, regardless of pressure from the security forces.
Many migrants are hopeful that the Biden administration will be more sympathetic than Donald Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy since 2018. President-elect Joe Biden has already announced he plans to reopen the asylum system and hopes to reunite families torn apart by Trump's tough immigration policies.
Many of the migrants were driven by an increasingly desperate situation in Honduras, where the economic ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and two Category 4 hurricanes in November have piled atop chronic poverty and gang violence.
Buses carrying dozens of migrants and police patrol vehicles carrying handfuls arrived sporadically through the morning at the Guatemala-Honduras border crossing of El Florido on Tuesday.
Mexican deputy foreign minister, Maximiliano Reyes, told news network Milenio that about 4,500 to 5,000 migrants had been removed from Guatemala and returned to Honduras. He said that close to 1,000 migrants had spread out across Guatemala and weighed their options despite the Mexican government's determination to stop the caravan from filtering across its southern border.
Honduran migrant Andy Osorio accused Guatemalan security forces of purposely harming his countrymen.
'It's not fair that they treat us like dogs, like animals,' he said.
A Honduran family, among the nearly 8,000 migrants, who last week made their way into Guatemala in hopes of making it to Mexico and then to the United States southern border to seek asylum, returned to Honduras on Tuesday
Honduran migrants, who were trying to reach the U.S. to seek asylum, get out of a military vehicle Tuesday as they were sent back by Guatemalan authorities, at El Florido border crossing between Guatemala and Honduras in the Guatemalan town of Chiquimula
President-elect Joe Biden made an appearance Tuesday at the Major Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III National Guard/Reserve Center in New Castle, Delaware. Biden's administration said it will reopen asylum to the United States but a date not been set yet
Biden's Homeland Security Secretary nominee, Alejandro Mayorkas, met the Senate committee and said that the new administration U.S. asylum laws to undocumented immigrants.
However, he did not say how he would deal with the remnants of the caravan that departed by foot while other hitched rides from a bus terminal in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, last Thursday.
'There is a commitment to follow our asylum laws, to enforce our asylum laws,' Mayorkas said. 'That means to provide humanitarian relief for those individuals who qualify for it. When people present themselves at our border we apply the laws of our nation to determine whether they qualify for relief under our humanitarian laws, or whether they don't. If they do not qualify to remain in the United States, then they won't.'
The returning migrants, including young children carried by their parents, were passed from Guatemalan border agents to their Honduran counterparts and then boarded buses that would take them back to their hometowns.
Cuban immigrant Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden's pick for Homeland Security secretary, told a Senate committee vetting his nomination Tuesday that the incoming government would roll back Donald Trump's tough measures to seal the southern United States border
Families who joined the migrant caravan last week made their way back to the El Florido border crossing in Chiquimula, Guatemala, after they were sent back to Honduras
Honduran migrants stand outside the Migrant's House in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, across from the border with Mexico, on Tuesday. However, the Mexican government remains stern about not permitting the illegal entry of migrant caravans looking to travel to the Mexico-United States border to seek asylum
Honduran migrants gather at the El Florido border crossing in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Tuesday after a massive caravan of 8,000 asylum seekers dissipated
Some 25 miles into Guatemala where hundreds of migrants had been stalled at a roadblock in Vado Hondo for several days, traffic flowed smoothly Tuesday and few migrants remained.
Guatemala's Institute of Migration reported that through Monday more than 2,300 migrants had been returned to Honduras.
If Guatemala's government had indeed dissolved the year's first caravan, it would be a relief to the incoming U.S. administration. Biden has promised immigration reform, but for now plans to leave Trump-era border policies in place fearing a surge of migrants when he takes office.
Guatemala's government had made clear it would stop the caravan for immigration and health reasons before it had even formed in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, last week after word was spread via Facebook and WhatsApp chat groups. President Alejandro Giammattei said 2,000 police and soldiers would be sent to the border.
At least 21 Hondurans tested positive for COVID-19, Guatemalan health officials said Monday. They would have to test negative for virus before they are deported.
The recent caravan was the first since October 2020 when at least 3,000 migrants from Honduras made their way into Guatemala before they forced to go back. Guatemalan immigration officials reported a Honduran man died after he fell off a trailer.
Honduran migrants hop out of a Guatemalan police vehicle in the city of Chiquimula on Tuesday before returning toback home to Honduras
Honduran Marco Sergio Hernandez, who was heading to the United States in a migrant caravan, is detained by Guatemalan soldiers for his deportation, in Tecún Umán, Guatemala, near the border with Mexico on Tuesday
Hondurans make their way back to their native country and walk across the Guatemala-Honduras international borderline after a caravan of almost 8,000 migrants was almost completely broke up, save for a few 100 individuals who still remain in Guatemala with the intention of making it into Mexico and then the United States to seek asylum
Those forces did not stop the caravan at the border, but a series of strategically places roadblocks where forces deployed tear gas and batons broke up the mass of people.
On Tuesday, Michael Kozak, acting assistant secretary for the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, commended Guatemala via Twitter for 'carrying out its responsibilities by responding appropriately & lawfully to the recent migrant caravan.'
Central American migrants began turning increasingly to caravans as a low-cost alternative to hiring a smuggler in 2018. Migrants gain a degree of safety in numbers and initially pushed successfully through Guatemala and Mexico. However, the U.S. government has led an effort to coordinate a more aggressive response from countries along the way to try to keep them from advancing far.
Caravans still represent only a fraction of the overall immigration flow that moves largely undetected.
A cloud of teargas rises as Guatemalan soldiers and police clash with migrants at a roadblock on the highway on Monday. The roadblock was strategically placed at a chokepoint on the two-lane highway flanked by a tall mountainside and a wall leaving the migrants with few options
Guatemalan security forces detain a Honduran migrant Monday as they clear a road where the migrants have been camping after authorities stopped their journey to the United States where they planned to seek asylum
In the past year, Guatemala has become a critical bulwark against the caravans, egged on by the more aggressive immigration policies of the Trump administration. Guatemalan forces effectively stopped multiple migrant caravans last year.
In Tecún Umán, across the Suchiate River from Mexico, Reverend Fernando Cuevas said Tuesday there aren't more than 70 migrants in the border town. Those that arrive do so in small groups, mostly family units, and try to cross to Mexico almost immediately.
Some go to the bridge to request asylum, while others attempt to cross the river.
Where hundreds of migrants massed last January before crossing into Mexico, this time Guatemala's highway roadblocks appear to have stopped most. Most of those who have made it through carry the required proof of a negative COVID-19 test and passports, Cuevas said.
Cuevas said both sides of the river are militarized.
A member of the Guatemalan police in search of Honduran migrants checks the documents of bus passengers in Zacapa, Guatemala, on Tuesday
Honduran migrants who voluntarily return to Honduras walk near the El Florido border crossing in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Tuesday after the caravan was broke up
A volunteer of the Red Cross in Guatemala gives food to Honduran migrants of a caravan who returned to Honduras
Honduran migrants who joined a caravan last week board a bus in Guatemala on Tuesday before returning home
In Tecún Uman, Guatemala deployed large numbers of National Police who made a local community center their barracks and patrol the streets for migrants. Two buses from the Mexican government sit in the central plaza in front of his church waiting to drive migrants back to the Honduras border, he said.
'We are seeing a situation a little different from other years when the migrants had access and free transit,' Cuevas said. His church had prepared for the arrival of migrants like a year earlier, but now he expects few will make it. 'We don't expect them in great numbers nor organized. We don't expect more than 100 at one time will be here.'
Mexico had sent thousands of National Guard members and immigration agents to that border last week in preparation. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to respect human rights, but also to enforce an orderly, legal migration.
One year ago, Mexican forces in riot gear rounded up hundreds of Central American migrants as they stopped to rest along a rural highway after crossing into the country.
Biden has been open to a six-month plan that would develop a system to process immigrants and secure funds for immigration judge due to fears of having 'two million people on our border' during a pandemic.
Biden, who will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, will send a bill to Congress on Day One that will pave the way to U.S. citizenship for about 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Under the legislation, those living in the U.S. as of January 1, 2021, without legal status would have a five-year path to temporary legal status, or a green card, if they pass background checks, pay taxes and fulfill other basic requirements. From there, it's a three-year path to naturalization, if they decide to pursue citizenship.
Biden is also expected to introduce legislation to reunite families ripped apart by President Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy.
The proposals place Biden on track to deliver on a major campaign promise important to Latino voters and other immigrant communities after four years of Trump's restrictive policies and mass deportations.
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