A governor in northern Mexico plans to block future caravans of Central American migrants from traveling into the region by blocking off the roads leading into the state of Coahuila, where one caravan arrived 10 days ago.
Coahuila Gov. Miguel Angel Riquelme said the state government is planning to close down all roads into the area if more migrants traveling in large groups try to enter the area from surrounding states.
“We are going to divert the roads,” Riquelme told reporters, according to a Mexican news site. “The reality is that someone is sending them here.”
The governor said last week the federal government will not maintain the facility housing migrants much longer because they do not want to entice more people, primarily from Honduras and Guatemala, into traveling to the U.S.
[Trump: ‘Only a wall’ will stop new caravans forming in Mexico]
Riquelme told Mexican Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero the Mexican government needs to find a permanent solution that stops putting pressure on communities where large groups pass through or arrive in.
“I told him that we were going to take this problem forward, but also that we were not prepared for another situation,” he said. “There is another caravan, but we do not know where it goes, the reality is that the migratory phenomenon continues, and we do not have the infrastructure to deal with it.”
Riquelme wants the feds to secure Mexico’s southern border to prevent people from illegally entering Mexico in the first place.
On Feb. 4, a group of about 1,900 migrants arrived on buses in Coahuila’s Piedras Negras, which sits just over the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.
The group originated in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Jan. 15.
