Caravan of over 10,000 migrants leaving southern Mexico for U.S.

MEXICO CITY, June 6 (Xinhua) -- A new caravan with more than 10,000 migrants left southern Mexico on Monday with the aim of reaching the U.S. border, organizers and local media reported.

The largest contingent so far this year, made up of Central American, South American and Caribbean migrants, departed from the city of Tapachula in the Mexican state of Chiapas on the border with Guatemala.

Many of its members have been waiting for months to regularize their immigration status in Mexico and legally transit to the U.S. border.

The caravan coincides with the start of the ninth Summit of the Americas, where heads of state and government will meet in the U.S. city of Los Angeles on June 6-10 to address several issues such as the increase in irregular migratory flows.

Luis Garcia Villagran, an activist with the Center for Human Dignity who is coordinating the caravan, told local media that the aim of the action is to show continental leaders that "migrant women and children, and migrant families are not a bargaining chip for ideological and political interests," and that "the southern border is nobody's backyard."

Throughout 2021 and in the past months, several migrant caravans have set out from Tapachula, but most have been broken up by Mexican authorities.

In recent months, Mexico has offered some migrants the possibility of regularizing their migratory status in states that are less congested than Chiapas, where migrants continuously converge.