HUIXTLA, Mexico – A second mass exodus of Central American migrants traveling in a caravan has entered southern Mexico, reaching this town about 50 miles north of the Guatemalan border.

Migrants traveling with the group said 2,000 to 3,000 migrants are traveling in the caravan. The large group crossed into Mexico on Sunday a week after another mass exodus entered Mexico and is now several hundred miles north in Juchitán de Zaragoza in the state of Oaxaca.

A municipal police officer said there were about 2,000 migrants in the city's main park.

The migrants said they left Tapachula early Wednesday morning and reached Huixtla midafternoon, covering a distance of about 27 miles.

The migrants could be seen Wednesday afternoon streaming into the park in the center of Huixtla. The migrants walked in small groups that stretched for dozens of blocks. Many were wet from rainstorms.

The migrants said the group forced their way into Mexico by crossing over an international bridge between Tecun Uman, Guatemala, and Ciudad Hidalgo, a town in the Mexican state of Chiapas, which is separated from Guatemala by the Suchiate River.

Yeni Cantanero, 30, said because the bridge was blocked she and her husband and their four children joined hundreds of migrants who waded across the river that separates the two countries. They said Mexican helicopters hovered over the water to create waves to deter the migrants from attempting to cross the river.

She said her young children almost drowned.

At least one migrant was killed and dozens were injured during clashes with police on Sunday, when migrants in the second caravan forced their way into Mexico, according to reports.

Cantanero was interviewed by The Arizona Republic last Friday as she and her husband waited for a wave of migrants they heard was on its way so they could try to cross the river en masse.

At the time, she said they had fled Honduras because gangs threatened to kill their family.

The caravan is more than 1,000 miles from the nearest point on the U.S. border, a distance that could take more than a month for the migrants to traverse.

Moises Nunez, 50, said the caravan of migrants in Huixtla has no coordinators. The migrants hope to unite with the larger caravan farther north, he said.

"We are trying to join the other group because we don't have coordinators and they do," Nunez said.

The larger caravan was more than 200 miles farther north on Wednesday.

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Nunez said he took a 13-hour bus ride from his home in Choluteca, Honduras, to Tecun Uman, Guatemala, because he heard migrants were gathering there to try and enter Mexico together.

Migrants have increasingly adopted the tactic of traveling in large groups to overwhelm immigration authorities in Mexico and as protection against criminal organizations while traveling toward the U.S.

Nunez said he has experience as a painter, construction worker, welder and mechanic. He said he decided to join the latest caravan because he has been unable to find work.

"There are no jobs for any of my skills," Nunez said, sitting under a kiosk in the town's main square, where dozens of other migrants were resting on the cement after walking all day, at times in pouring rain.

About 66 percent of the population in Honduras lives in poverty, according to the World Bank. In rural areas, one in five people lives in extreme poverty, or on less than $1.90 a day. Honduras also has one of the highest homicide rates in the world, according to the World Bank, and has experienced political instability since last November's re-election of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who many Hondurans believe won in an election marred by fraud.

President Donald Trump has already ordered at least 5,200 troops to be stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border, and on Wednesday, Reuters reported that Trump said that number could grow to 15,000. They join about 2,100 National Guard troops whom Trump sent to the border earlier this year.

The expanded military presence on the U.S.-Mexico border, coming less than a week before the midterm election, has been criticized as a move to politicize the armed forces for electoral ends.

Jose Luis Portillo, an 18-year-old migrant from Yoro, Honduras, who arrived in Huixtla on Wednesday with the latest caravan, said his goal was to reach the U.S. But Trump's decision to send military troops to the border had given him second thoughts.

He was now thinking of heading instead to Tabasco, the Mexican state directly north of Chiapas, where a friend lives.

"Like everyone here, that is our intention" to reach the U.S., Portillo said. "But with what is happening with the president, we may stay here (in Mexico) awhile."

But Jorge Munez, a 50-year-old migrant from Santa Barbara, Honduras, said he was determined to try to enter the U.S. despite the presence of U.S. troops.

He was wearing an Arizona State University jersey he said was sent to him by a brother living in "Carolina."

When asked if he was afraid he could be killed, Munez shrugged his shoulders.

"No," he said. "If we are killed, what can we do?"

But he said not even the U.S. military would deter him from trying to enter the U.S.

"I don't think (Trump) is going to try and kill us. He's just trying to scare us."