Members of a Honduran-led migrant caravan in southern Mexico are hoping last week’s Democratic midterm win will help them enter the United States. César Sandoval, a 47-year-old Nicaraguan travelling with the group, told AFP he hoped to have “another chance” to enter. “Our destination is the United States,” he said. AFP reported that the border “remains virtually closed.”
“We hope they remember that the ones who gave them the vote so they could make it to the Senate and Congress were the sons of Hispanics, the sons of Latinos,” Sandoval said.
The caravan, which calls itself “Dios con Nosotros” (“God with us”), is reported as the third such group from Honduras since September. El Universal said more than 1,000 people arrived in Tapachula, Chiapas, on Sunday, after entering Mexico on Friday night at the Suchiate border.
Cristian Pablo, 38, told AFP: “God is coming with us on this journey. The United States offers better opportunities than Guatemala.”
Narciso Aparicio, 73, a Salvadoran interviewed in Tapachula on Monday, told Telemundo, in remarks translated from Spanish: “You hear that … because Congress has changed, the border has to be open.” “We have hope in God that [in Congress] they are going to help us,” he said. Even if conditions at the crossings were difficult, he added, one must keep trying, “because the idea is to keep looking for a new life.”
Kathia Quirós, an immigration lawyer, told Telemundo the border remains “super closed,” and that the possibility of undocumented people presenting themselves at the border and managing to enter is “zero.” She said border control rests with the White House, with President Donald Trump, not with the Capitol, and would remain so regardless of what happens in Congress. The new Congress does not take office until January. People in caravans who reached the U.S. border would, she said, be detained, processed, and in the great majority given deportation orders and returned.
Telemundo’s Marina E. Franco reported that some newly elected or re-elected members of Congress have signalled possible reforms for people already in the United States, including Dreamers and those who had Temporary Protected Status until President Trump suspended it. Even if such a reform advanced, she wrote, it would not affect migrants who are only now trying to cross the border by caravan or otherwise.
Telemundo also reported an unusual recent remark by Trump that he might be willing to look at a reform from the new Congress, paraphrasing him as saying his immigration policy may have been “too tough” on deportations of people without records who had lived in the United States for many years. That account concerned interior enforcement of people already in the country, not the reopening of the border to a caravan. Telemundo said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has already said deportations will continue.
On Tuesday afternoon, El Universal reported, more than 500 migrants walked on from Tapachula after resting at Parque Bicentenario, including some who had joined in the city. The paper again named the column “Dios con Nosotros.” Haitian and Cuban migrants were said to have joined after waiting on claims with COMAR, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance. Some of the walkers were aiming for the United States; others for the centre or north of Mexico. Authorities were described as escorting the column for traffic safety, not breaking it up. They planned to walk at night because of the heat, especially for the children.
The paper said the foreigners consider that the Democrats’ midterm victory could make it easier for the migrant population to enter.
Separately on Tuesday, AFP reported, Mexican National Guard, immigration officers and Chiapas police blocked a smaller group of about 100 Central American migrants after they crossed the Suchiate river. Local press images showed patrol vehicles placed across the road; the migrants ran; about 40 were detained, according to reports from Tapachula. Mexican immigration authorities had not confirmed those detentions to AFP. The agency called this the second attempted caravan crossing in three days, distinct from the larger group already in or leaving Tapachula.
El Universal said the first of the earlier caravans, from San Pedro Sula, reached Mexico’s southern border in September, and a second group from the same city arrived the following month. Both walked about three weeks and 250 kilometres along the Chiapas coast to Arriaga, near Oaxaca, where they were broken up by the Instituto Nacional de Migración. The institute instead issued permits, or salvoconductos, with which some reached Mexico City, Monterrey, Tamaulipas and other cities. AFP said the previous two groups were broken up before leaving Chiapas and were given temporary stay permits.
This website reported in January 2025 that a caravan of roughly 2,000 illegal immigrants left Tapachula on the day of President Trump’s inauguration. In November 2024, as he prepared to return to office, it reported a caravan of about 1,500 advancing through Mexico. After Democrats won majorities for the new Congress on November 3, this website reported that immigration enforcement remained one of the few issues on which Republicans retained an advantage over Democrats.
