A large caravan of migrants is moving toward the United States. The group of more than 7,000 people represents the largest such migration so far in 2023 and provides a major challenge for the Biden administration’s border policies.
The large group includes migrants from a number of Latin American countries. It began its journey toward the U.S. border from southern Mexico Monday.
A leader of the group, Irineo Mujica, claimed that the caravan expanded over the last several days. According to Mujica, a U.S. citizen, the group originally started from near the Mexican border with Guatemala with 5,000 people, which soon grew to 7,000.
Mexican officials said that the caravan originally started with 3,500 in number.
Mujica criticized the Biden White House, arguing that the administration was allowing the current border crisis to happen. He believes that Latin American countries were sending migrants northward to get concessions from the United States.
“I believe the Biden administration has dropped the ball,” Mujica said. “A lot of the countries are fueling this immigration.”
The caravan leader said that the current migration was “weaponized” against the United States, with the Mexican government “ganging up” with other Latin American states “to make sure all this immigration goes straight to the United States.”
Migrant caravan organizer claims Latin American nations ‘conspiring against the US,’ ‘fueling’ border crisis | Fox News https://t.co/Rfdx0ckwil
— Lara Logan (@laralogan) November 1, 2023
Mexico has a border barrier with its neighbors.
He cited what he called Latin American nations’ efforts to extract money from the migrants to make it to the U.S. border, where they would be allowed to stay in the United States.
“Joe Biden’s administration had lost the ball, does not know what to do with immigration,” Mujica said.
He further asked about whether American officials recognized the scale of the current situation.
The newest caravan comes after U.S. officials said that the September flow of migrants in the United States was the highest level yet recorded.
Border officials tallied almost 270,000 migrant encounters, including almost 220,000 attempted illegal crossings. Since the start of the current fiscal year, almost 2.5 million people have attempted to cross the border, which is also a new record.
