Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said he is unconcerned about a caravan of several hundred people moving through Central America to the southern border of the United States.
“This caravan is not anything even remotely similar to what we saw in ’18 and a little bit of ’19 — so, it’s a few folks here, a few folks there,” Wolf said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, marking his first comment on the development.
The group embarked from Honduras earlier this week. Photos and video shot by journalists tracking the group’s movement indicate it comprises families with babies and young children, unaccompanied teens, and adults.
At the country’s northern border with Guatemala, they were met with tear gas from Honduran police attempting to discourage the group of a couple of hundred people from leaving the country. However, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said those with identification would be allowed to enter.
The group is significantly smaller than the 10,000 who made a similar trek in April 2019 and another in late 2018, which DHS claimed contained 270 convicted criminals and people from 20 countries. But previous caravans began with several hundred to a couple of thousand migrants and grew as they picked up people while going north.
“What has changed since 2018, or even from last year, are the number of agreements that we have in place with Honduras, Guatemala, as well with Mexico,” said Wolf. “We have [Customs and Border Protection] agents — tactical agents — in Guatemala. And, of course, the government of Mexico, at President Trump’s urging, has deployed National Guard to both their southern and their northern border,” he said. “Should individuals make it through all of that, when they still reach the southwest border, they are going to run into a number of programs that we have put in place that will not allow them into the country without any legal reason to be there.”
The Trump administration has been in talks with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over the past year to require asylum-seekers traveling through those countries to seek help there first. However, the U.S. has only entered an official agreement with Guatemala, which would mean those passing through from Honduras are supposed to apply for asylum there instead of going on to Mexico or the U.S.
Depending on the route, traveling from Mexico’s southern border to the U.S. can take 1,100 to 2,500 miles, depending on if one goes to Southeast Texas or Southern California, respectively.
Honduras, where the group originated, has the highest murder rate in the world. The country is home to 8.25 million people and has reported 90.4 murders for every 100,000 residents, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
