TAPACHULA, Mexico – A tip led me to 40 kilometers north of this down-at-heel border city, by rental car, until I spotted the unmistakable sight: a 1,000-strong caravan of migrants marching by foot along Mexico Highway 200 for hundreds of yards.
Men, women, children, and babies bobbed and weaved together in an elongated, colorful human pack. I spent the day walking among and interviewing them, the only reporter there.
Just the week before, a 2,000-strong migrant caravan from Tapachula did catch some fleeting American media attention, and next came a massive third one marching out of Tapachula which became a full-scale U.S. news story as the American presidential election campaigns draw to their climactic Nov. 5 end, with illegal immigration a top issue in the election’s outcome.
Image CreditTodd Bensman
American news media are warning that migrant caravans are about to start crashing over the U.S. border, but in my interviews, I discovered that story was totally, wildly wrong.
For starters, none of these caravans ever intend to reach the American border because that is not their main purpose — at least not until after the U.S. election. They are not autonomous upstart rebel movements like caravans of old. Rather, the Mexican government seems to have facilitated them and has provided military and police escorts so that their participants can safely reach their true destinations, which again, is not the American border.
The underlying story that spawned these caravans begins in December 2023, conveniently right at
