The migrants’ 3,200km journey from the Mexico-Guatemala border is expected to end at the United States border.
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“You can not negotiate with the law”, Rodriguez told Al Jazeera.
“They are trying to distinguish between those who may have a legitimate claim for asylum, and that’s the 20-day permit that they’re given to stay [in Mexico] and make their case”.
Kevin, 16, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said that a local gang, Barrio 18, had tried to forcibly recruit him, and that they had threatened to harm his entire family if he did not become a member.
“Most of the world tends to side with the United States on this one”, said Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican diplomat who served as ambassador to China.
Here’s what he said and what the reality is.
“The president thinks we’re all delinquents”, he added. “We’re going to work really hard to get as far as we can”.
In a statement late Monday, Mexico’s government said about 400 participants in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries.
“In some ways it’s similar to the U.S. -Mexico border in that there are vast areas that are open with very little infrastructure, roads, very little people living there, very sparsely populated”.
A statement from Mexico’s Interior Ministry said Monday that “under no circumstances does the government of Mexico promote irregular migration”.
Canadian government and industry sources remain skeptical that the finish line on a NAFTA deal is anywhere in sight, despite reports from Washington that the Trump administration is hoping for a kind of deal-in-principle when the leaders from the three NAFTA countries meet in Lima, Peru next week.
It is estimated that more than 500,000 people cross Mexican territory each year with the intention of reaching the United States, according to United Nations data. Crime in Honduras was so bad that she made a decision to embark on the hard a journey across several global borders with two young asthmatic sons, the younger of whom is now sick and on antibiotics.
The storm around the Refugee Caravan, which for the past several years brought together people who are fleeing from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, occurred in part because of the scale of this year’s movement.
“The people who are going all the way to the border are the ones who have the surest chance of gaining refugee status in the United States, which is a right protected under worldwide law”.
“They are saying, ‘Please, spread out, we need there to be less of you, ‘” an activist from the group People Without Borders (Pueblo sin Fronteras) told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he says he has received death threats for helping the migrants.
“Justice does not exist for us”, she said. “And, likewise, George W. Bush sent them at a time when violence, particularly in border cities like Tijuana in Ciudad Juarez, [was] astronomical”.
But a March deadline came and went for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program after successive federal courts ruled that the legal justification the administration had sought to end the program was on flimsy grounds and ordered authorities to continue processing renewals for the program as litigation continues.
“I don’t believe in the American dream, because the president over there is a son of a bitch who doesn’t like immigrants”, she said.
On Monday, Mexican immigration officials began taking the names of people interested in filing for asylum, or temporary transit or humanitarian visas in Mexico. But we’ll have to take a look.
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The President wasn’t asked about Mexican migration but did say regarding NAFTA that he continues to look for a resolution that will, “benefit the development of the three countries (Mexico, the United States and Canada) that are negotiating with NAFTA”. What’s more, Mexico continues to devote resources to breaking up drug cartels and organized crime, the fear of which drives many immigrants to head north for refuge.
