Honduran Migrant Headed for US: Joe Biden Is 'Going to Help All of Us' By C. Douglas Golden
Published January 19, 2021 at 9:14am
The last thing President-elect Joe Biden wants as he prepares to launch an effort to get an ambitious immigration bill passed — legislation that would include de facto amnesty — is a caravan of Honduran migrants heading through Central America because they believe a Biden administration will make it easier for them to cross into the United States.
Unsurprisingly, though, that’s precisely what he has.
In Guatemala on Sunday, there were clashes again between Guatemalan security forces and members of the caravan, according to NPR. Guillermo Díaz, the top immigration official in the Central American country, estimated that 7,000 to 8,000 people had illegally entered the country since Friday.
An earlier estimate by The New York Times had put that number at as high as 9,000, although it had been revised downward to 7,000 in a Sunday update. The Times had also reported many of the migrants bypassed coronavirus testing checkpoints necessary to enter Guatemala, although that information is absent in its current report.
NPR noted that while nationals of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua used to be able to travel between the countries freely, a negative COVID-19 test has been necessary since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We are very concerned about this situation,” Díaz said in a social media video, according to NPR. “These people who’ve formed this caravan or are forming into a caravan … is a very difficult situation to manage.”
“We hope this situation stops,” he said, “And the flow of migrants ends.”
That’s unlikely for two reasons.
The first is the situation in Honduras is dire; violence and joblessness have always been a problem in the Central American country, and the situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic and two hurricanes.
The second is that caravan members think Biden will ease up on the Trump administration’s asylum rules and ditch the “Remain in Mexico” policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which forced migrants who claimed asylum but hadn’t applied in their home country to wait below the border while their cases were adjudicated.
This is because, as The Times pointed out in a Dec. 22 article, that’s exactly what Biden promised on the campaign trail.
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