Migrant Caravan: Thousands Move Into Guatemala, Hoping To Reach U.S.

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A Honduran migrant woman carries a child on her back as they travel with other migrants by foot along a highway in Chiquimula, Guatemala, on Saturday, in hopes of reaching the U.S. border.

Sandra Sebastian/AP

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Sandra Sebastian/AP

Honduran migrants clash with Guatemalan soldiers in Vado Hondo, Guatemala, on Sunday.

Sandra Sebastian/AP

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Sandra Sebastian/AP

Another migrant, Miguel Angel, tells AFP he’s heading north now because he believes U.S. immigration policy will change once Joe Biden takes office as president.

«I have hope and faith in God, and in the good person that the United States has chosen, he says.

«Biden is a good person and isn’t the same as the administration that’s just ended.

But his chances of making it to the U.S./Mexico border are far less than they were a few years ago. In October 2020, another caravan of Hondurans dispersed before it got across Guatemala, and Guatemalan officials said they sent more than 3,000 Hondurans home from that group.

In 2019, Mexico deployed National Guard troops to its southern border to deter Central Americans from trying to cross.

Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., says he doesn’t think it’s likely that many of the Hondurans in this current caravan will make it all the way to the U.S. frontier. «I suspect that if this caravan actually made it to the Guatemalan/Mexico border that there would be even the heavier presence of (Mexican) National Guard to try to detain the migrants, he says. «We saw this again in October. That caravan really stopped in Guatemala at that time. So I don’t foresee them getting to the U.S./Mexico border in large numbers.

Before the pandemic, nationals from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua were able to travel freely across each other’s borders. Officials now are requiring a negative coronavirus test to cross. Some migrant advocates say this requirement is being used to block some refugees from seeking asylum abroad.

Honduran migrants, part of a caravan heading to the United States, stand in front of a police cordon in Vado Hondo, Guatemala on Sunday.

Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

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Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, agrees with Ruiz that this current caravan is unlikely to turn into a crisis for the Biden administration during its first few weeks in office.

«In 2018, in advance of the election there were a lot people holding their breath about caravans that dissipated long before they ever came close to the United States border, Jawetz says.

Despite that, he says the incoming Biden team can’t ignore immigration and the immigration policies of the outgoing Trump administration for long.

«A number of the steps that were taken by the last administration to try to deter people from coming to the country where not only illegal, but unconscionable, he says.

Migration is as old as time. It isn’t going away. Even if this caravan doesn’t make it to the U.S. border, other migrants are already there waiting. Some other potential migrants may view the change in administration in Washington as an opportunity to try to enter.

«Even if that were the case, to what ends would you go in order to head that off? Jawetz asks. «Would you have them violate U.S. law, international law, and prevent people from requesting asylum at the border? Would you have them take their children away in order to send fear into the hearts of families throughout the region?

Soon after he takes office, Biden is going to have to face the big questions around what Jawetz calls the U.S.’s «broken immigration system.