Hundreds of migrants are preparing to depart this Thursday from Tapachula, Chiapas, in a new caravan heading to central Mexico, while the city continues to host thousands of Cubans who have been trapped for months due to delays in immigration processes and difficulties in finding employment and relocating legally.
The mobilization is scheduled for this August 20 and could initially gather between 500 and 600 people of various nationalities, according to reported Diario del Sur.
The interested parties held their first in-person meeting on Tuesday at the Bicentennial Park to coordinate the outing, following several weeks of organization through social media and WhatsApp groups.
The departure is scheduled for 5:00 PM, and the organizers have requested that those wishing to join arrive approximately two hours early to register.
The initial destination will be Mexico City, although participants have indicated that not everyone intends to reach the United States and some are looking to stay in other areas of Mexico.
The delays at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar), the lack of employment, and the costs of food and rent are among the main reasons cited by those preparing for the mobilization.
Some migrants reported that they have been waiting for a resolution of their applications for a year, or even a year and a half.
The latest reports on the organization of this caravan do not yet specify the nationality of the registrants.
However, the presence of Cubans among the migrants stranded in Tapachula is well-documented, so their involvement in this new mobilization cannot be ruled out, as has happened in previous caravans.
At the beginning of the month, a report from Univisión noted an estimate of between 20,000 and 25,000 Cuban migrants in Tapachula.
The same report described foreigners who remain for months, and in some cases more than a year, waiting for responses to their applications with Comar.
The source consulted by the television station also indicated that Tapachula accounted for over 60% of the applications for refugee status in Mexico and that by 2026, more than 80,000 applications had accumulated there, a burden that diminishes the capacity to respond as new cases continue to be submitted.
The magnitude of the Cuban presence had already been noted months earlier. In May, the mayor of Tapachula, Yamil Melgar Bravo, stated that there were more than 10,000 Cubans stranded in the city and highlighted that many were facing lengthy processes to obtain asylum or regularize their immigration status.
Melgar then warned that the slow pace of the procedures led some migrants to abandon their processes and continue their journey without documents through caravans, an alternative that exposes them to greater risks during the journey.
By 2026, several caravans have already departed from Tapachula with migrants seeking to leave the Mexican southern border due to a lack of jobs and delays in their regularization process.
In March, a Cuban who had been trapped without documents in Tapachula for over a year joined the "Genesis 2026" caravan, which consisted of around 500 migrants.
The man explained that he decided to leave after being unable to regularize his situation or find job opportunities.
The Cuban presence was once again confirmed in June when the caravan "De la Mano de Dios" set out from Tapachula, made up of more than 200 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala,
Diario del Sur specifically documented a group of five Cubans who had been deported from the United States and joined the tour.
Related videos:
Filed under: