Wall Street Journal
By Alicia A. Caldwell
April 25, 2018
Sitting in a crowded, tin-roofed migrant shelter within sight of the U.S., Ana Suaso said she was ready for her monthlong journey from Honduras to end.
She and her three children have covered more than 2,000 miles by foot, by train and finally by bus with hundreds of other Central Americans who made up a caravan of migrants that has caught the attention, and raised the ire, of President Donald Trump.
Ms. Suaso and nearly 130 other Central Americans arrived at the Tijuana shelter Tuesday. She said they were fleeing violence, corruption and poverty in their home countries. As many as 300 more Central Americans are expected to reach Tijuana in the next day or so. They plan to head through the sprawling border city’s downtown to the international crossing point on Sunday. Nearly all are expected to ask for asylum.
This isn’t the first time a large group of Central Americans have made the trip together, but this effort gained attention after Mr. Trump repeatedly denounced the group on Twitter and said it was evidence of a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Earlier this month, he ordered thousands of National Guard troops to be sent to the international boundary.
“I have instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country,” Mr. Trump tweeted Monday. “It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive! WALL.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement late Wednesday that agency officials are monitoring the caravan’s travels and are “doing everything within our authorities to secure our borders and enforce the law.”
“If you enter our country illegally, you have broken the law and will be referred for prosecution. If you make a false immigration claim, you have broken the law and will be referred for prosecution,” Ms. Nielsen said.
Cynthia San Gabriel, a 42-year-old from Las Vegas volunteering at the Movimiento Juventud 2000 shelter, said the caravan was an annual event that in the past barely drew notice from anyone.
“This is my third one,” said Ms. San Gabriel, who said she has been helping at the shelter for about a year and has volunteered in Mexico for about five years. She said about the only difference she has seen with this year’s caravan is that there are more women and children.
The number of people caught crossing the Mexican border illegally reached record lows in the first few months of Mr. Trump’s presidency. Though arrest figures, the best estimate of how many people are trying to sneak into the U.S., have steadily risen since last summer, they remain at lows last seen in the early 1970s.
Ms. Suaso said she decided to flee with her children, a girl and two boys ranging in age from 8 to 14, because of the gang violence in Honduras. Various groups, including Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, had threatened her family and killed other relatives.
Ms. Suaso said she had heard that Mr. Trump doesn’t want her and others in her group crossing the border. That won’t stop her, she said, adding that she has the right to ask for asylum in the U.S.
“It’s not up to Trump if I make it,” she said in Spanish. “It’s up to God.”
Another Honduran migrant, 27-year-old Gabriela Hernandez, said she and her two young children fled their home after the children’s father became abusive. Ms. Hernandez said the man is a mechanic and would sometimes help gang members with auto repairs, so when he started hitting and threatening her, she decided it was time to leave.
Ms. Hernandez said she had planned to travel on her own with her two young sons, ages 6 and 2, intending to hire smugglers if necessary. Then she found the caravan in Tapachula, Mexico.
“It was safer to go with them,” she said, adding that there were other children for her boys to play with along the way.
Trump administration officials and some lawmakers have called for an overhaul of the U.S. laws and policies that govern how asylum seekers, families and unaccompanied immigrant children are treated. Mr. Trump and Ms. Nielsen have said legal “loopholes” make it difficult to quickly deport asylum seekers who don’t have permission to be in the U.S.
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