As many as 10,000 migrants are believed to be traveling with caravans from Central America to the United States with the hopes of entering the country, senior administration officials said Monday.
Between 8,500 and 10,500 people are making their way from Northern Triangle countries El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to America’s southern border. About 6,000 have already made it to Tijuana, a city of 1.7 million residents that sits just over the border from San Diego, Calif.
“Most of those are part of the caravan or some of those who are groups or individuals appeared prior to the caravan,” a Department of Homeland Security official told reporters in a phone briefing Monday afternoon.
Members of the last major caravan in April also traveled 2,500 miles from the Mexico-Guatemala border to Tijuana, then attempted to apply for asylum at the ports of entry there or by illegally entering between ports, including over the Imperial Beach fence.
[Also read: Troops land at border, lay razor wire, ready tent cities, anger narco gangs]
Around 1,600 people from the most recent caravan are in Mexicali, a smaller Mexican city that is 120 miles east of Tijuana.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the DHS agency tasked with overseeing all ports, has asked all asylum seekers to apply for asylum at those crossings rather than sending children or families between ports where Border Patrol agents apprehend them and must then send certain classes of migrants through the asylum application process.
DHS said Monday the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the highest-traffic port in the Western Hemisphere, can only hold 300 people seeking asylum at a time, and the impending surge of thousands of people will be difficult to process.
One official said the caravan is comprised of “thousands of people who are most likely not eligible for asylum” and are “teenage adult males,” not families and children.
“Many if not most are simple economic migrants seeking to be reunited with families, ineligible for asylum,” the official said in the phone call.
Ninety percent of asylum seekers of those from the April caravan did not meet criteria to receive asylum, he said.
