Honduran Migrant Group Treks North As U.S. Calls For Tighter Borders

Another invasion force.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras (Reuters) – More than 1,000 people, including families and women carrying babies, set off from Honduras toward the United States on Saturday, days after the United States urged Honduras’ president to halt mass migration.

Recent attempts at group crossings from Central America to the United States have tested U.S. President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” stance on illegal immigration, as people fleeing violence and poverty defy threats of deportation.

“I believe we’ll get to the United States. There’s no work in Honduras, and you live in fear that they’re going to kill you or your children,” said Fanny Barahona, 35, an unemployed teacher who walked with her nine-year-old son and carried a two-year-old daughter.

Some 1,300 people joined the so-called “March of the Migrant,” planning to walk from San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras through Guatemala and into Mexico, organizer Bartolo Fuentes said. Once in Mexico, they plan to request refugee status to remain in the country or a visa to pass through to the U.S. border, he said.

In April, media attention on a similar group of migrants, dubbed a “caravan,” prompted Trump to press for tougher border security and demand such groups be refused entry. Most in the caravan said they were fleeing death threats, extortion and violence from powerful street gangs. […]

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said U.S. funding was declining, and he called on the United States to reunite migrant children with their parents after Washington’s policy of separating families trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border put Honduras under “huge pressure.”

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