More than 2,000 Honduran migrants and asylum seekers entered Guatemala on Thursday as part of the latest caravan to leave for the United States, despite new asylum agreements across the region and vows to stop their advance.
The caravan split into two groups, with one heading to the remote northeast Peten Department in hopes of finding a safer crossing into Mexico.
:::::
Guatemalan police accompanied by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have swept up hundreds of migrants, returning them to the Honduran border and in effect dashing their plans to travel together in a “caravan” to the United States.
Other, smaller groups traveled on in dribs and drabs in a movement involving several thousand people but very different from previous caravans.
Praying and singing songs, the group of 300 migrants – adults, teens and young children – had set out from a shelter in Entre Rios under rainy skies before dawn and walked about six hours before stopping in the town of Morales to eat and rest. There they were challenged by police, loaded on to buses and returned to the border to register under rules governing freedom of travel between Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Guatemalan police officers said the United States paid for the buses.
„US agents aid in Guatemalan crackdown on hundreds of migrants headed north“