Migrants making their way towards the United States as part of a caravan of 3,000 people charged at the border between Guatemala and Mexico on Friday, cutting the wires and confronting rows of border police.

Mexico had warned the migrants that they would need a visa to enter the country and sent riot police to the Guatemala-Mexico border city of Tapachula as the caravan moved north.

Some of the migrants ignored the warnings and charged across, leaving them facing arrest. Manelich Castilla, spokesman for Mexico’s federal police, said that buses were arriving at the border to allow women, children and the elderly to get off the border bridge and be processed.

But at the bridge migrants, who have formed orderly lines, were last night refusing to board the buses fearing that they will simply be deported.

Some violently shook fences at the border. A handful jumped into the Suchiate river below to swim for rafts. Others turned back toward Guatemala.