TAPACHULA, Mexico – A idea led me to 40 km northwest of this down-at-heel border town, by rental car, until I spotted the undeniable vision: a 1, 000-strong convoy of migrants marching by feet along Mexico Highway 200 for hundreds of yards.
People, women, children, and newborns bobbed and weaved together in an enlarged, beautiful animal group. As the only writer present, I spent the evening interviewing them while we were walking.
A large next migrant caravan leaving Tapachula just the week before caught some brief British media attention, turning into a full-length U.S. media narrative as the American presidential election campaigns draw to their climax Nov. 5 close, with illegal immigration a top concern in the election’s outcome.
Image CreditTodd Bensman
British news media are warning that immigrant caravans are about to commence crashing over the U. S. boundary, but in my interviews, I discovered that tale was absolutely, wildly bad.
First of all, none of these caravans ever have any plans to cross the American border because that is not their main goal, at least not until after the U.S. election. They are not independent upstart rebel movements like old caravans. Instead, the Mexican government appears to have assisted them and provided military and police escorts so that participants can safely travel to their true destinations, which is again, not the American border.
The underlying narrative that led to these caravans first appears in December 2023, conveniently at Christmas, when most journalists and editors would be sipping eggnog around their homefires.
When President Joe Biden called his Mexican counterpart and struck a deal, and then sent his most senior lieutenants to Mexico to finalize the details of what is still a highly enigmatic grand diplomatic agreement.
Caged Cities
The agreement called for Mexico to send 32, 500 troops to the U.S. border to detain thousands of intending border crossings from the northern precincts, force them to travel thousands of miles by air and bus, and entrap them in cities like Tapachula in Chiapas State and Villahermosa in Tabasco State, behind militarized roadblocks.
As I was perhaps the first and only in the country to report on January 17, Mexico shut off most of its freight trains to migrant-free riders, bulldozed northern camps, and relentlessly searched for more deportee targets.
What is the most likely reason for these interactions, besides the official justification for “ongoing efforts to manage migratory flows” and “urgent enforcement actions are needed”? Best guess: to avoid the Democratic presidential candidate from the devastation of mass border crossings for the duration of the upcoming campaign season, which was sure to have illegal immigration as a major issue.
Indeed, illegal border crossings immediately plummeted from an embarrassing record-breaking 12, 000-14, 000 per day in November and December 2023 to about 3, 000 or 4, 000 per day before January was even over.
The U.S. media has been sipping eggnog ever since, as hundreds of thousands of immigrants have stacked up in the crowded cities of Mexico’s deep south month after month. “60 Minutes” finally broke from the boozy pack to run a story about it in late March.
Even the recently released 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that the dramatic decline in illegal border crossings since December 2023 is largely due to “increased Mexican enforcement efforts.”
What does any of this have to do with migrant caravans that have suddenly appeared ten months later?
Hellscape Tapachula and Population Transfers
My interviews with those who are in the caravans and those who are planning to join new ones during a weeklong visit to Tapachula, as well as with government officials, police, and Mexican troops laid it out.
With an encircled, expanding population being deported into Tapachula from the north and an estimated 500 to 500 new foreigners entering every day from Guatemala on the south, the city was bursting at the seams.
As money-less people who had to travel north for months, begged, pleaded for coins and food, slept in public spaces, waited for Mexican asylum permits or American parole on the CBP-One mobile phone apps, the poverty index skyrocketed for both the immigrants and the city’s managers.
Tapachula became a hellscape.
No one really knows how many people were stacked up, but Tapachula’s neighborhood shelter managers informed me that they had long since been occupied. The publisher of Noticia De Tapachula, the daily newspaper, told me 150, 000 immigrants were in town at any given time, a 40 percent increase in the city’s normal population of 350, 000. Only a few months into the Mexican operations, 20, 000 immigrants had been internally deported to Villahermosa, a number that must be many times that by now for the city of 340, 000.
I’ve been to Tapachula five times in the past ten years, and I’ve never seen it so packed. Southern Mexico must almost certainly be bulging to dangerous proportions, with many tens of thousands of foreign nationals yelling for help as they cross the American border.
However, the presidential campaigns in America were still in progress, and Mexico’s central government had to hold the line while easing the pressure from its crammed cities. It was untenable.
Mexico’s chosen relief strategy was to issue short-distance city transfer travel permits that would allow thousands to leave the jobless, denuded, crime-riddled hellscape of Tapachula for less beaten southern cities, still in Chiapas or in neighboring states.
Image CreditTodd Bensman
I spent time at two different roadside stops where federal immigration officers would shout names to the crowd and who then boarded buses to Chiapas ‘ other regional cities, but hardly ever did it go beyond Mexico City, despite camps there being overflowing.
For most, venturing north of Mexico City still risks a one-way ticket back to these hellscapes, a truly deterring prospect.
Fear of Trump Brings on the Caravans
Mexico is currently struggling to keep its end of the bargain for a specific reason. In the caravan I followed, and back in Tapachula, dozens of immigrants claimed they were desperate to cross the border if Donald Trump wins the election and declares the Republican nominee’s pledge to close the entryway for all immigrants. They’re pouring in from Guatemala and pushing hard against the Mexican cordon, hoping for a breakdown.
The bus transfer program under the Mexican government does not appear to be keeping up with the fear and tension that are causing immigrants to enter at a rate that Mexico’s foreign minister recently reported has reached 7, 000 per day.
And so the Mexican government began using caravans to move people much more quickly than the intercity bus transfer program I witnessed in action. This explains why the Mexican military and police do n’t block the caravans, instead escorting them.
Not the US border, but other regional towns and cities are where they’ll be staying. The caravans wo n’t leave middle Mexico, thanks to the soldiers and police.
Every caravan traveler I spoke with was aware that the majority of the caravan’s cargo would arrive in Tuxtla, Chiapas, and some believed they might have to try it on their own to get to Mexico City. No one, however, was willing to take the chance of being deported back to the hellscape Tapachula and beyond.
Mexico is still attempting to hold onto its end of the bargain, at least until Nov. 5, despite the fact that some are starting to slog through in greater numbers and eventually reach the Texas city of Eagle Pass, for example.
At least not until the American election.
No matter who wins, caravans to the border are all but guaranteed.
Mexico might consider that it has already complied with its obligations to the current White House occupant and that the door is open wide if Trump or Harris wins. Americans could experience a significant tidal wave of caravans in the ten weeks leading up to Inauguration Day, if Trump is elected.
If it’s Harris, perhaps the massive tidal wave can go on for the next four years, much like the last four.
