The Zelaya siblings, from El Salvador, Nayeli, right, Anderson, center, and Daniela, huddle together on a soccer field, at the sports club where Central American migrants traveling with the annual “Stations of the Cross” caravan are camped out, in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The children’s father Elmer Zelaya, 38, said the family is awaiting temporary transit visas that would allow them to continue to the U.S. border, where they hope to request asylum and join relatives in New York.(AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
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Children play with the face of a Mickey Mouse piñata, at the sports club where Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan have been camped out in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to people in a caravan of Central American migrants, and said the procession of 1,000 or so migrants that drew criticism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
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Salvadoran migrant Alexis Cea, 25, poses for a picture wearing a shirt featuring an eagle printed over the pattern of an American flag, at the sports club where Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan have been camped out, in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to people in a caravan of Central American migrants, and said the procession of 1,000 or so migrants that drew criticism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
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Children wait in line to receive gifts during a children’s show that was put on to entertain them at the sports club where Central American migrants traveling with the annual Stations of the Cross caravan have been camped out in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to people in a caravan of Central American migrants, and said the procession of 1,000 or so migrants that drew criticism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
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Men take bucket showers in the early morning at a sports center, where Central American migrants traveling with the annual “Stations of the Cross” caravan have been camped out, in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The Mexican government began handing out transit or humanitarian visas to the migrants in the caravan, and said the procession of 1,000 or so that drew criticism from President Donald Trump had begun to disperse. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
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Elmer Zelaya of El Salvador prepares a breakfast of eggs and sausage for his family of five, at the sports club where Central American migrants traveling with the annual “Stations of the Cross” caravan are camped out, in Matias Romero, Oaxaca State, Mexico, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. Zelaya said he, his wife, and their three children are awaiting temporary transit visas that would allow them to continue to the U.S. border, where they hope to request asylum and join relatives in New York. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)
Associated Press
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MEXICO CITY — Migrants in a caravan that drew criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump began packing up their meager possessions and boarding buses to Mexico City and the nearby city of Puebla on Thursday.
MEXICO CITY — Migrants in a caravan that drew criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump began packing up their meager possessions and boarding buses to Mexico City and the nearby city of Puebla on Thursday.
The migrants had been camped out at a sports field in southern Oaxaca since the weekend. Trump had said they were marching toward the U.S. border, though that was never among the organizers’ plans.
Trump wrote on his Twitter account Thursday that “the Caravan is largely broken up thanks to the strong immigration laws of Mexico and their willingness to use them so as not to cause a giant scene at our Border.”
On Thursday, one bus left the camp before dawn en route to the central city of Puebla, where organizers hope to hold a migrants’ rights symposium. Another left at midmorning carrying migrants to Mexico City, where some want to set up meetings with international organizations to talk about the plight of migrants fleeing violence and poverty.
At its height last week, the caravan consisted of almost 1,500 people mostly from Central America. Many have been given temporary transit visas which they intend to use to request asylum in the United States.
Others say they plan to ask for humanitarian visas to stay in Mexico.
Mexican Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete Prida said Thursday the government was granting the humanitarian visas “to guarantee humane treatment to those women who were pregnant or had small children.”
Navarrete Prida said the migrants had decided to disperse, not because of pressure from the U.S. or Mexican government. “This wasn’t the product of a tweet,” he said.
“The decision to demobilize a caravan isn’t in the hands of the government, it is up to the migrants themselves,” he said. “Every time the different levels of government have tried to stop the caravans in past years, and they have happened for more than ten years, it has been met with resistance, it backfired,” Navarrete Pride said. “It wouldn’t have been possible to dissolve this year’s caravan if it wasn’t a decision by the migrants themselves.”
