Trump also threatened to deploy the military to stop caravan which plans to head through Mexico toward the US border

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Donald Trump is threatening to deploy the US military and close the southern border with Mexico if a convoy of migrants from Central America is allowed to keep moving northwards.

'Yes, we can': caravan of 1,600 Honduran migrants crosses Guatemala border Read more

The group of would-be immigrants, which has now grown to as many as 4,000 people, left Honduras and plans to head through Mexico toward the US border, infuriating Trump.

The president made his threats in a series of tweets early on Thursday morning, demanding that the Mexican government turn around the convoy.

“I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” he said.

Trump has previously threatened to cut off millions of dollars in aid to Honduras, a plan he reiterated on Thursday, saying he was “stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population”.

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The Mexican government has warned that anyone entering in an “irregular manner” – without a passport and visa – faces detention and deportation, and on Wednesday, 500 federal officers including riot police were deployed to the border city of Tapachula, where the migrants will start arriving on Thursday.

It was not clear if the troops would stop the migrants crossing or merely observe them enter, as Guatemalan police did when the caravan left Honduras.

Mexico’s outgoing president, Enrique Peña Nieto, will host emergency talks with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, on Friday. His successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador – who will be inaugurated on 1 December – has pledged to issue work visas for Central Americans to deter them for migrating to the US.

Trump has portrayed the caravan of migrants, which includes many families traveling with children and fleeing poverty or gang violence, as a threat to the United States.

It would take several weeks for the group to travel to the US border. Trump made a similar threat to cut off aid to Honduras over another caravan of migrants in the spring, which was never carried out.

Then, the Mexican government allowed hundreds of migrants, mainly Hondurans, to reach the US border, infuriating Trump, who initiated the family separation policy soon after. The latest caravan is much larger, and hundreds more are preparing to leave Honduras in coming days.

It was unclear how Trump intends to close the entire US-Mexico border although earlier this year he called up some military units to enforce border security. US troops are currently deployed on the frontier with Mexico, with national guard members from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California also working on border security.

“I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are doing little to stop this large flow of people, INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS, from entering Mexico to U.S.,” Trump tweeted on Thursday.

No evidence has emerged of criminal affiliations among the members of the caravan, who have mostly told reporters they are fleeing gang violence and poverty, and are traveling as a group for protection from criminals who target migrants for robbery, rape and kidnap.

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Trump has frequently portrayed undocumented immigrants to the US as a criminal threat and in league with Democrats – a tactic also adopted by many Republican candidates in the ongoing midterm election campaign.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found a stark divide on the issue: among voters who support a Republican candidate for Congress, 75% called illegal immigration a “very big” problem, making it the highest-ranked national problem for GOP voters.

By contrast, only 19% of voters backing the Democratic congressional candidate rated illegal immigration a very big problem. Democrats were more likely to rank affordable healthcare and gun violence as major problems.

The latest statistics show that the number of families crossing the border with children has surged to record levels, the Washington Post reported. Border patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, which is the highest total ever for one month and an 80% increase since July.

But overall figures for illegal entry from Mexico are much lower than in previous periods. During the 2018 fiscal year, agents arrested 396,579 people along the border, a 30% increase since 2017 – which had the lowest illegal immigration numbers in the last 56 years.

“The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA,” Trump tweeted, referring to a trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada. “Hopefully Mexico will stop this onslaught at their Northern Border. All Democrats fault for weak laws!”

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The Mexican government has in the past demonstrated a willingness to detain and deport Central American migrants upon request by the US.

In 2014, Mexico launched the Southern Border Plan after the then president, Barack Obama, declared the surge in unaccompanied minors seeking refuge at the US border an “urgent humanitarian crisis”.

Tens of millions of dollars in US aid supported the deployment of new technologies and thousands of Mexican troops to patrol alongside immigration agents along established migrant routes.

More than 151,000 Central Americans were detained in 2016 – almost 90% more than in 2013 before the US-backed policy was implemented.