The head coordinator for the 1200 strong illegal migrant caravan marching through Mexico to the United States told the migrants on Tuesday that President Donald Trump want to nuke the caravan.
Irineo Mujica, reported by MPR to be a “native of Mexico, and a longtime permanent resident of Minnesota”, is director of Pueblos Sin Fronteras, the organizer of the migrant caravan. Mujica has been working for years to help migrants travel through Mexico to the United States.
The Washington Post quoted Mujica speaking to the migrants gathered on a soccer field in Matias Romero where the Mexican government has stopped the caravan to process the migrants and give them travel documents.
After days of walking from Mexico’s southern border, the caravan of hundreds of migrants that has drawn President Trump’s Twitter ire has now halted on a brown-grass soccer field, its participants unsure and anxious about the way forward.
The men and women, most from Central America, were squatting Tuesday in a walled public park while government officials decided their fate.
“We are scared, just like you,” Irineo Mujica, the head coordinator of the migrant caravan, told the assembled group through a megaphone Tuesday morning. “Now President Donald Trump has said that he wants to hit us with nuclear bombs.”
“We have a right to live without fear,” said coordinator Irineo Mujica. “Since we’re refugees, they should treat us like refugees.” #viacrusis #refugees #caravan pic.twitter.com/TjDGZUPXkH
— Maya Averbuch (@mayaaverbuch) April 3, 2018
Irineo Mujica addressing the migrants.
The AP reported PSF might be confused by Trump urging the Senate to use the ‘nuclear option’ to end the filibuster and enact stronger border security laws.
Even coordinators of the caravan seemed to misunderstand the debate in the U.S. when Trump’s endorsed a “nuclear option” for pushing funding for his border wall through Congress. They told worried families Tuesday that the U.S. president had floated the idea of using a nuclear weapon against the caravan of mostly women and children who have fled violence in Central America.
Sitting on a thin foam pad and trying to corral her sons, 2-year old Jonathan and 6-year-old Omar, Gabriela Hernandez wondered aloud at what Trump must think of them.
“I see it as something really sad, because I don’t understand how a child this age can make things difficult for him,” said Hernandez, a 27-year-old who is two months pregnant.
She would like to get into the U.S., where she has a cousin in Houston. Crime in Honduras was so bad that she decided to embark on the difficult a journey across several international borders with two young asthmatic sons, the younger of whom is now sick and on antibiotics.”
The Post also reported on the Mexican government processing the migrants:
On Tuesday, several Mexican immigration officials began taking a census at the migrant encampment in the town of Matias Romero, in the southern state of Oaxaca. The migrants crowded around the officials and thrust out their IDs and documents.
Several hours later, the officials returned and started calling people’s names over megaphones. The authorities handed those individuals temporary legal permits, giving them 20 days to leave Mexico. Several migrants said they would use that time to travel toward the United States. Others could receive 30-day permits to apply for asylum in Mexico. It was unclear how many people would receive the documents.
…Migrants who have participated in past caravans said some have reached the United States but failed to enter the country. Mujica, who works with the migrant rights group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the organizer of the march, said participants would not descend en masse on the U.S. border.
“If we arrive at the [U.S.] border with more than 1,000 people, we’re not going to make it,” Mujica told the crowd Tuesday. “We are going to go in smaller numbers to see who really has the right for asylum.”
That is of course if Trump doesn’t nuke them first.
Slideshow of migrants traveling thorough Mexico:
Trump said on Tuesday he will deploy troops to the border.
