The main migrant caravan appears to be headed to Tijuana in hopes of crossing into the United States, a Mexican official and American congressman said.
The main caravan, which consists of some 6,000 people according to Mexican authorities in Queretaro, departed from Mexico City on Nov. 9.
Nashieli Ramirez, director of Mexico’s Human Rights Commission, said that the caravan is heading to Tijuana through Queretaro, Guadalajara, Culiacan, and Hermosillo.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security subcommittee, following briefings with the Department of Homeland Security on Nov. 9, said that he also thinks the caravan will head to California.
“It is expected that it will take approximately two weeks before a significant portion of the caravan will reach the U.S. border near San Diego, California. There are another 4,000 migrants headed north in three additional caravans, according to the International Organization for Migration.”
Planned Route
According to a map referred to by Cuellar, the caravan planned on traveling northwest from Mexico City to Celaya, some 162 miles (261 kilometers) away. They were then going to head mostly west, and slightly north, to Guadalajara, a distance of approximately 190 miles (307 kilometers).After departing Guadalajara, the group would head northwest again to reach Mazatlan, a coastal city in Sinaloa state, some 302 miles (486 kilometers) away.
They would then travel up the coast through Hermosillo about 551 miles (888 kilometers), before turning west above the Gulf of California and heading to Tijuana for about 526 miles (847 kilometers).
The front of the caravan reached the outskirts of Guadalajara on Nov. 12. Members are mainly trekking along highways.
Faster Travel
While the caravan previously averaged only about 30 miles (50 kilometers) a day, the migrants are now covering daily distances of 185 miles (300 kilometers) or more, partly because they are relying on hitchhiking rather than walking. They have come about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) since they started out in Honduras around Oct. 13.Migrants have hopped aboard so many different kinds of trucks that they are no longer surprised by anything. Some have stacked themselves four levels high on a truck intended for pigs. On Monday, a few boarded a truck carrying a shipment of coffins, while yet others squeezed into a truck with narrow cages used for transporting chickens.
Many, especially men, travel on open platform trailers used to transport steel and cars, or get in the freight containers of 18-wheelers and ride with one of the back doors open to provide air flow.
The practice is not without dangers. Earlier, a Honduran man in the caravan died when he fell from a platform truck in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
