Migrant Caravan Update: Riders Want $50,000 Each To Return Home

With demands in hand, two groups of Central American migrants marched to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana on Tuesday. This is the latest migrant caravans to make its way to an American border in hopes of seeking asylum.

The first group of caravan members to reach the consulate included about 100 migrants. They arrived around 11 a.m. with Alfonso Guerreo Ulloa as the group organizer, Fox News reported. The Honduras native presented the group’s demands that urged Trump to let them into the U.S. or pay them $50,000 each to return home.

The migrant group also made demands that included faster processing for asylum seekers, increased migrant entry into the states, and the halting of deportations, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Ulloa told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the $50,000 figure was decided upon as a group . Ulloa went on to say that the money would help the migrants to return to their home and start small businesses there.

“It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa told San Diego Union-Tribune . “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.”

The migrant group gave the consulate 72 hours to respond to their demands. The demands also criticized U.S. intervention in Central America and called for the removal of Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras, from office

The second migrant group arrived at the consulate at approximately 1:20 p.m. the same day. They were a group of about 50 migrants with demands that included faster asylum processing and increased entry for asylums seekers.

The group asked the Trump administration to allow as many as 300 asylum seekers entry into the U.S. each day at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego, California. The port of entry in San Diego current allows about 40 to 100 asylum seekers a day admittance into the states, Fox News reported.

The letter from the second group of migrants read, “In the meantime, families, women and children who have fled our countries continue to suffer and the civil society of Tijuana continue to be forced to confront this humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis caused in great part by decades of U.S. intervention in Central America.”

Approximately 6,000 migrants have traveled from Central America to Tijuana, Mexico. Of this number about 700 have returned home, another 300 have been deported, and approximately 2,500 have applied for humanitarian visas in Mexico, caravan member Xochtil Castillo, who met with Mexican officials on Tuesday, told Fox News.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has reported that others have been able to cross in the U.S. illegally or moved to other parts of Mexico. Some may have even fallen through the cracks and are no longer accounted for.