by Tom Ozimek, Discern Report:
Around 3,000 migrants set out on Sunday in a large caravan from southern Mexico and began walking north in what organizers said was a protest demanding an end to detention centers like the one that burned down last month, killing dozens.
The migrants, mostly Venezuelans, started walking north early Sunday from Tapachula, a city in Mexico close to the border with Guatemala.
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The stated goal of the migrants is to reach Mexico City in around 10 days and appeal for the closure of detention centers.
Past caravans that started in southern Mexico have typically headed north toward the United States, with migrants often seeing such mass walks as a way to reach the U.S.–Mexico border.
“We joined the caravan to be safer and not be detained,” said Yoani, a Venezuelan migrant who only gave his first name, in a phone interview with Reuters.
Yoani said that, once in Mexico City, he and his family were hoping to speed up the legal process for onward travel.
It’s unclear how many of the protesters plan to continue on toward the United States.
Deadly Fire
Organizer Irineo Mújica told The Associated Press that the migrants are demanding the closure of Mexico’s immigration agency, which some have blamed for a March 27 fire at a detention center in Ciudad Juarez that killed 40 people and injured dozens more.
“It could well have been any of us,” Salvadoran migrant Miriam Argueta said of those killed in the fire, according to AP. “In fact, a lot of our countrymen died. The only thing we are asking for is justice, and to be treated like anyone else.”
The fire on March 27 started when migrants set fire to foam mattresses when they found out they would be deported, according to Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Video footage of the fire showed three uniformed officials leaving the room and appearing to leave the migrants behind in locked cells as the fire spread.
Five people face homicide charges over the deadly blaze, including three immigration agents and a private security guard, as well as a Venezuelan man believed to have started the fire.
Mújica, a leader of the Pueblos Sin Fronteras activist group, called the detention centers “jails.”
“We are asking the government that justice be done to the killers, for them to stop hiding high-ranking officials,” Mújica told AP in Tapachula before the caravan set out on its trek north. “We are also asking that these jails be ended, and that the National Immigration Institute be dissolved.”
Some caravan participants carried crosses or banners reading “The Government Killed Them,” referring to those that died in the fire.
After leaving at around dawn, the migrants made it to a town about nine miles north of Tapachula before settling in for the night.
Title 42
It comes as the Biden administration expects to lift Title 42 on May 11, although there are lawsuits attempting to keep it in place.
The Trump-era policy, which was enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, allows border agents to immediately deport people who have crossed the border into the United States unlawfully.
