Guatemalan police and soldiers have used tear gas and wielded batons and shields against a group of Honduran migrants that tried to push through their roadblock.
EL FLORIDO, Guatemala
A once large caravan of Honduran migrants that pushed its way into Guatemala last week had dissipated by Tuesday in the face of Guatemalan security forces. Small groups pressed on toward the Mexican border, while others accepted rides from authorities back to Honduras.
Many of the migrants were driven by an increasingly desperate situation in Honduras, where the economic ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and two major hurricanes in November have piled atop chronic poverty and gang violence. That combined with a hope that the new U.S. administration of President-elect Joe Biden would be more welcoming gave birth to the year’s first caravan.
Guatemalan security forces block Honduran migrant caravan heading to US Duration: 01:36 Guatemalan security forces blocked hundreds of migrants advancing towards the US on Monday. The government said the road in eastern Guatemala reopened to traffic on Monday after troops and police officers launched teargas and pushed them back down the highway. Security forces closed in on the migrants just beyond the village of Vado Hondo, some 55km from the borders of Honduras and El Salvador. The removal of the group was the latest effort by Guatemalan authorities to break up the caravan, which authorities said numbered close to 8,000 people ,within hours of its departure for the US last week.
Guatemala troops, police break up caravan of weary migrants
Sandra Sebastian
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Guatemalan soldiers and police block Honduran migrants from advancing toward the US border, on the highway in Vado Hondo, Guatemala, Monday, Jan. 18, 2021. Hundreds of Honduran migrants have awoken tired and hungry after a second night stuck along a rural Guatemalan roadside by police and soldiers who will not let them pass. (AP Photo/Sandra Sebastian)
VADO HONDO – Guatemalan police and soldiers on Monday broke up a group of hundreds of migrants who had spent two nights stuck at a roadblock on a rural highway.
âWe canât go home,â Vinicio said after getting off the bus at the El Florido border crossing, keeping an eye on his two youngest children. The girls, ages 2 and 3, were laughing and playing on a railing outside the Honduran immigration offices. Their father was wracked with stress. âWe will hide out until we can leave again,â he said.
Crackdowns on migrant caravans in recent years have come amid U.S. pressure on Mexico and Central American countries to stop migrants and asylum-seekers long before they reach the U.S. southern border. Regional militarization in response to migration increased during the administration of President Donald Trump, but it was a continuation of bipartisan efforts to contain migration from President Barack Obama’s tenure in office â efforts that will likely continue under Biden.