Migrant caravan heads north from southern Mexico
Some 2,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, walked out of the southern Mexican city of Tapachula early Friday en masse, to pressure authorities into allowing them to continue to the US border at a time attention is focused on immigration. The latest large public exit of migrants from Tapachula follows the discovery of an abandoned semitrailer in San Antonio with more than 60 migrants inside. Fifty-three of them died in the failed smuggling attempt. It also comes a day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration did not err in ending the controversial Trump-era policy that forced some asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico. Following other mass movements of migrants from Tapachula last month, the Mexican government quickly negotiated to give them temporary documents. Many migrants are no longer tolerating Mexico's strategy of confining them to the south, far from the U.S. border. They complain that the process of regularizing their status -- usually by applying for asylum -- takes too long and with limited work available, they cannot afford to wait. Dozens of National Guard troops watched them walk without intervening.