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A group of around 2,000 mostly Central American migrants continued their mass exodus from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on Sunday, reaching a city about 16 miles away.
Migrants set out early in the morning to avoid the burning heat. Mostly from Honduras and El Salvador, many were accompanied by small children.
On the second day of their march, they reached the city of Huehuetan in the southern state of Chiapas around noon.
Unlike previous marches that began Saturday from Tapachula, not as many Haitian migrants took part, with thousands reaching the U.S. border around Del Rio, Texas in September.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti are waiting in the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border for refugee or asylum papers that could enable them to travel, but are tired of the delays in the process.
On the first day of their march, the migrants pushed past a line of state police officers trying to stop them.
There was minor scuffle and a young child suffered a minor head injury, but the migrants continued on their way.
They made it just a few miles (kilometers) to the nearby village of Alvaro Obregon on Saturday before stopping for a night rest on a baseball field.
José Antonio, a migrant from Honduras who refused to give his last name because he feared it might affect his case, said he had been waiting in Tapachula for two months for a response to his application for some kind of visa.
“They told me I had to wait because the appointments were fully booked,” said the construction worker. “There is no work there (in Tapachula), so I joined this group out of necessity.”
He said he hopes to make it to the northern city of Monterrey to find work, adding, “We’ll keep going day after day to get as far as possible.”
Police, immigration authorities and the National Guard abandoned minor attempts at similar outbreaks earlier this year.
In August, National Guard forces in riot gear blocked several hundred Haitians, Cubans and Central Americans walking along a highway from Tapachula.
Mexico requires migrants applying for humanitarian visas or asylum to stay in the border state of Chiapas, Guatemala, so their cases can be processed.
In January, a larger caravan of migrants attempted to leave Honduras but were prevented from crossing Guatemala.
The marches are reminiscent, but not nearly as big, of the migrant caravans that crossed Mexico in 2018 and 2019.
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