Mexican Security Official: Timing of Caravan Connected to U.S. Midterm Elections

The top official for national security in Mexico believes there is a connection between the thousands of migrants from Central America and elsewhere heading through Mexico to the U.S. border and the November 6 midterm elections.

“The fact that this is being done at a time when there are election campaigns in the country they’re headed for, that’s not a coincidence, that’s not chance, that’s the reason why,” Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete said Wednesday in an Associated Press (AP) report.

“Activists with the caravan have denied there is any political motivation in the timing of the event,” AP reported, although the group supporting the latest caravan is Pueblo sin Fronteras — people without borders.

“Here we are talking about a humanitarian crisis of a lack of jobs, a lack of opportunities, and the use by third parties of a vulnerable population group like the migrants,” Navarrete said at a press conference on Wednesday, according to AP.

“He did not specify who those third parties were but said ‘I have talked about there being people tied to criminal activities who have infiltrated the caravan … we have detained some,’” AP reported, adding that the Mexican official may have been referring to two Hondurans who were arrested and deported on Monday, one accused of murder and the other drug trafficking.

AP reported on Thursday that the first caravan was seeking bus transportation from the Mexican government but was turned down. And some migrants have been targeted for trying to get their own make-shift transportation.

AP reported: 

They had tried to arrange bus transport from Juchitan, but failed, leaving them once again on foot, hitch-hiking and looking for rides where they can find them.

But federal police began pulling freight trucks over and forcing migrants off, saying their habit of clinging to the tops or sides of the trucks was dangerous.

“Get off! Get off!” police officer Benjamin Grajeda shouted to migrants clinging to the side of a truck. “You can ride inside, but not on the outside.”

AP implied the thousands of various groups currently heading north through Mexico are like similar caravans that “have occurred regularly over the years and passed largely unnoticed.”

“But Trump has focused on the latest marchers seeking to make border security a hot-button issue in next week’s midterm elections,” AP reported.

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