New Migrant Caravan: More than a Thousand Hondurans Arrived at Guatemala

New migrant caravan heads to the United States and makes its way to Guatemala despite COVID-19 restrictions. Source: Commons.

More than 1,300 Honduran migrants arrived at the Guatemalan border control station El Ceibo on October 1. They bypassed Guatemalan security forces and entered the country despite travel restrictions put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.  

This new migrant caravan, organized primarily through Facebook and WhatsApp, set off for the United States from the city of San Pedro Sula in northwest Honduras.

Despite the pandemic, this caravan is the second such group to depart for the U.S. recently. Though Guatemala had restricted land entry into the country until September 18, Honduras made no efforts to impede migrants from entering Guatemalan territory, through which they had to pass in order to arrive in the U.S. 

Guatemala comprises part of the Central America-4 Border Control Agreement (CA-4), which allows free movement between its four member states: Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Although Guatemala restricted entry to those who tested negative for COVID-19, gaps in border security exist in several locations, and migrants have continued to cross the border illegally. 

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) has denied any “regularization of the passage of caravans of undocumented migrants across the southern border of the national territory, as it has been falsely reported on social media.” The INM, abiding by the Mexican Law of Migration, has prepared itself to face the caravan and has considered deploying the National Guard in the border to enforce “the health protocols defined by the Government of Mexico during the health emergency derived from COVID-19.”

Earlier this year, between January 18 and 23, around 4000 migrants from the last Central American migrant caravan arrived at the southern Mexican border, where authorities quickly detained, relocated, and eventually deported them. Mexican authorities acted swiftly in the hopes that their response would deter further movement northwards. 

Nevertheless, eight months later, during a global health crisis, and from exactly the same place where the last caravan originated, more than a thousand people have now crossed into Guatemala with the U.S. as the final destination.