Yesterday a caravan of roughly 2,500 migrants stopped trying to cross Mexico’s southern border by bridge and instead waded across the river and attempted to get past a line of Mexican National Guardsmen waiting on the other side. That led to some rock-throwing by both sides but hundreds of migrants wound up being taken into custody by the Mexican authorities. Today, those migrants are already being deported by bus and by plane:

…1,000 had tried to enter illegally Monday…and hundreds of them were apparently detained by Mexican National Guardsmen and immigration agents. Immigration officials estimated Monday night that 500 had evaded capture by the security forces. Ebrard said Mexico already has begun deporting some back to Honduras, putting 110 on a flight to San Pedro Sula and sending 144 back by bus. Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Nelly Jerez said Mexico expected to deport 500 Hondurans a day on buses from Wednesday through Friday.

A few hundred people remained on small sandy islands in the middle of the river, waiting to see what would happen. The Mexican authorities refused to hand out any food or water and soon most of the migrants returned to the Guatemalan side of the border to regroup and find food.

“We are in no-man’s land,” said Alan Mejía, whose 2-year-old son was cradled in his arms clad only in a diaper as his wife, Ingrid Vanesa Portillo, and their other son, 12, gazed at the riverbank Monday night. Mejía joined in five previous migrant caravans but never made it farther than the Mexican border city of Tijuana. “They are planning how to clear us out, and here we are without water or food,” said a desperate Portillo. “There is no more hope for going forward.”

Vox reports that in 2017 about 2,000 Hondurans were granted asylum:

Honduras produces high numbers of people seeking asylum: In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, the US granted asylum to 2,048 migrants from Honduras, compared with 1,048 from Mexico, 3,471 from El Salvador, and 2,954 from Guatemala.

That’s a tiny fraction of the numbers of Hondurans who have been arriving at the US border in the past few years. In fact, it’s possible there were more Hondurans in the caravan yesterday than the total number who received asylum in the US for an entire year. That’s because the majority of migrants in these caravans are economic migrants looking for work or a better life. They have learned to apply for asylum in the US because, until recently, that meant being released into the United States while waiting for a court date. But under the Trump administrations remain in Mexico policy, asylum seekers must now wait for their turn to see a judge in Mexico instead in the US.

All of this is driving the number of Central American migrants attempting to reach the US border down which ultimately means fewer illegal crossings. Border apprehensions have dropped for seven straight months since a peak last May.