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Southern border: "If I don't pass, either I starve or I will be killed in my country"

Groups of migrants crashed into an impenetrable National Guard wall along the Suchiate River in Chiapas; they will insist on crossing it by force

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Two years ago was the first time he set foot on national territory. He arrived in one of the caravans of 2018, but his stay in the country was short. He was deported to Honduras, where he tried to "escape" from misery. Now, Cristian again wants to enter the country unlike the porous border he found two years ago, today''s one is impenetrable.

On Monday he tried to enter the country by force but was repelled by the National Guard (GN). The southern border of Mexico is guarded by hundreds of GN soldiers, who leave nothing uncovered: rivers, bars, corridors, everything is sealed. "If I don''t pass (cross), either I starve or I will be killed me in my country."

Cristian is originally from the Department of Copan and, at 21, decided to try again to reach the United States because in his home country the only alternative he has is agricultural activities, the countryside, "which the payment is not sufficient to even eat".

Like him, in the new wave of caravans, some migrants have crossed the border with Mexico on previous occasions. The majority to escape misery and others, such as Salvadoran Carlos Roberto, who did so to escape from violence, the gangs, the Maras.

"It''s the first time I try to cross because I don''t want to join gangs, and in my land sometimes it is not that one wants to join, is that, if you do not join when they decide, then the death threats begin," says Carlos Roberto.

Activists who support migrants and shelter applicants denounced that migrants who have surrendered to INM (National Migration Institute) agents are practically being required to return to Honduras, putting them at risk.

"Because not everyone migrates for economic reasons, many do so to escape the conditions of violence in their country," said a shelter assistant in the small city of Tecún Umán, located on the border, on the Guatemalan side.

Now, hundreds, thousands of Hondurans, almost all young people, are stranded on the border between Mexico and Guatemala. They are the faces of migration, some try to cross for the first time, many already have.

Thus thousands of migrants who failed to enter the national territory lived this black Monday. About 3,000 migrants from Honduras, from the caravan that left the capital of that country this 2020, remain stranded on the border with Mexico, at the crossings of Chiapas and Tabasco. The deployment of elements of the National Guard prevents them from entering massively.

According to data from the National Migration Institute (INM), another 1,087 migrants have entered in a regulated manner, surrendering to immigration agents and initiated procedures to remain in the country, and subsequently continue their route to the United States.

While migrants are looking for ways to enter Mexico, the INM and the National Guard maintain containment operations along the Suchiate, Hondo and Usumacinta rivers, as well as supervisory tasks at the border bridges of Ciudad Hidalgo and Talismán.

Also, they remain operational in the communities of the southern border of Mexico, such as El Ceibo, Tenosique, El Triunfo, Reforma and Escárcega, the unit recognizes.

Uncertainty and anxiety

After they decided to go down to the Suchiate River to cross the border of Guatemala with Mexico and were repelled by the National Guard. Thousands of people who make up the migrant caravan that goes to the United States remained on Monday in uncertainty about their destiny.

At least two-thirds of the thousands of migrants tried forcibly to enter Mexico, which decided to close the border to prevent the free transit of Central Americans.

The migrants were suppressed by the National Guard, who used pepper gas to disperse the hardest, those that even threw stones at the agents.

AJ