TAPACHULA, (Mexico): A caravan of some 300 mainly Central American people, some carrying children and suitcases, set out from here on foot Saturday hoping to reach the United States, the fourth such procession in a week.
The new group spent the night in this town in southern Chiapas state on Mexico’s border with Guatemala and headed north on a coastal highway.
The group is made up mainly of people from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and Venezuela.
It is the fourth such group in a week to set out amid a heavy presence of Mexican national guards bent on stopping these asylum seekers.
Activists and UN officials traveling with the migrants say police have used excessive force against them. Two migration agents were suspended for hitting a traveler.
The government has said it will nonetheless maintain its policy of trying to keep US-bound migrants from traveling through Mexico.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday he will send US President Joe Biden a letter reiterating his proposal for the US to grant work visas to Central Americans and Mexicans and address the poverty and violence that are among the problems fueling these migratory flows.
Mexico has seen an increased flow of undocumented migrants heading north since Biden arrived in the White House promising a more humane approach than that of Donald Trump.
In an attempt to curb the influx, the Mexican government says it has deployed more than 27,000 members of the security forces along its southern and northern borders.
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