About 1,500 migrants form a new caravan in Mexico

TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — About 1,500 migrants formed a new caravan Wednesday in southern Mexico, hoping to walk or catch rides to the US border.

The migrants are mainly from Central and South America.

Some say they are hoping to reach the United States before Donald Trump's inauguration in January, saying they think it might be more difficult after that. They started out walking from the city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, where thousands of migrants are stranded because they do not have permission to cross further into Mexico.

Migrant caravans began forming in 2018, and they became a final, desperate hope for poorer migrants who do not have the money to pay smugglers. If migrants try to cross Mexico alone or in small groups, they are often either detained by authorities and sent back to southern Mexico, or worse, deported back to their home countries. 

This year, in a bid to stop people from gathering at the border to claim asylum, the U.S. government expanded areas where migrants can apply online for appointments to enter the United States to a large swath of southern Mexico.

The CBP One cell phone app was instituted to make asylum claims more orderly. About 1,450 appointments are made available daily, encouraging migrants to get an appointment before they show up at the border. But the service was only available in northern and central Mexico.

By extending the app south to Tapachula, officials hoped it would stem the rush north. But some migrants still want to be close to the border so that if they do get one of the cherished appointments, they can get to it quickly and not risk missing it. Trump has promised to end the app, reduce legal pathways to the US and organise mass deportations.

The biggest caravans formed in 2018 and 2019, and back then Mexican officials helped out some of the migrants by arranging buses to border cities, but that created a backlash in those communities.

Groups from those original caravans did eventually reach the border. In caravans since then, most participants have sought out as many hitch-hiking or paid rides as they can, and often swarm empty trucks to hitch a ride on empty freight platforms. But that has become much harder as Mexican authorities discouraged buses, taxis and trucks from stopping to pick up migrants. In recent years, authorities have eventually offered temporary transit permits to dissolve the caravans.

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