Who’s ready for yet another migrant caravan?

If you’re not ready, you may as well hide under your blanket because the next caravan is on the way. And once again, we’re not talking about a few dozen stragglers. Reuters is reporting that more than one thousand migrants from various nations have formed up in the southern end of Mexico and have begun the march northward. And since they are already inside the country, the Mexican government is unlikely to do much about it until they reach our border.

A caravan of some 1,200 migrants from Central America and Cuba began moving towards the U.S. border from southern Mexico this weekend, migration authorities said on Sunday.

The National Migration Institute said the migrants were already inside Mexico when they opted to form a caravan in the southern city of Tapachula on the border with Guatemala.

Early on Saturday, the large group of people set off towards the town of Huixtla in the southern state of Chiapas, a route followed by previous groups heading north, the institute said.

As noted above, this isn’t a group that was formed in Guatemala or Honduras, needing to cross multiple borders to reach their goal. They were collected together after they were already inside of Mexico and they’re following the route charted by caravans before them. Despite changes in both U.S. and Mexican policy, there’s probably not much standing in their way before reaching the American border.

Mexico’s new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), was quoted as saying that he would continue to offer migrants the opportunity to stay in Mexico, with the chance to obtain jobs and better wages than they ever would back home. His country is also still honoring their agreement with the United States that keeps the migrants seeking asylum in Mexico until their case is ready to be heard.

Those are all positive steps, but as we’ve seen in recent months, many of those migrants are not interested in settling in Mexico or in doing things according to the rules. If they flood the border in a rush, some percentage of them are going to make it through. And as we recently discussed, our detention centers are so full and our courts so backed up that as many as one thousand per day will simply be released into the interior of America. They’re given a court date, but up to 40% of them will never show up.

Still don’t think we’re facing an emergency at the border? Go down there and hang out on the Mexican side for a while and get back to us on that.