Migrants leave southern Mexico in caravans to protest the slow asylum process

TAPACHULA, Mexico, August 28 (Reuters) – Mexico has deployed hundreds of security forces to lead a caravan of migrants and asylum seekers who left the Mexican city of Tapachula on Saturday to try to reach the Mexican capital, where they waited to apply for a fast-track asylum file.

Videos posted on social media showed clashes between members of the heavily militarized Mexican National Guard and migrants, many of whom were accompanied by young children or carrying babies in their arms.

Most of the approximately 500 people in the caravan came from Haiti, Cuba, Central America and Colombia. By Saturday evening, they had advanced about 20 miles north of Tapachula in the rain.

For days, migrants from Tapachula have been organizing protests to demand that their cases be speeded up so that they can leave the southern state and move to other parts of Mexico or head to the border of Mexico. United States without risking deportation, according to local reports.

“We cannot survive in Tapachula,” said Colombian migrant Carlos Correa, 31, who said he joined the caravan on Saturday after waiting three months without receiving a response to his asylum application.

“We ask the Mexican government to please create us a humanitarian corridor so we can travel to the (U.S.) border,” he said.

Under Mexican law, migrants must remain in the state where they sought asylum until their cases are resolved, a process that can take months or years.

Mexico is facing growing pressure from Washington to take steps to reduce immigration to the United States. In recent weeks, the Mexican government has sent thousands of migrants to southern Mexico by plane, where they are transported by bus to the Guatemalan border. Read more

Report by Jose Torres in Tapachula and Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey, Writing by Laura Gottesdiener; Edited by Andrea Ricci and Daniel Wallis

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