Police at checkpoints set up along the highway, in both Honduras and Guatemala, asked for identification documents, but made no attempt to stop the migrants.
Video footage showed hundreds of migrants, holding up the Honduran flag and chanting as they crossed the border at El Florido checkpoint into Guatemalan territory.
The first migrant caravan from a Central America country this year includes women and young children. Coming less than a week before U.S. President-elect Joe Biden takes office, the migrants apparently hope that the new administration with be more sympathetic than the Trump administration to their plea for a better life.
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, however, are collectively taking security and public health measures due to COVID-19 pandemic, to prevent unauthorized border crossings.
Mexican officials said Thursday, they had discussed migration with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and raised “the possibility of implementing a cooperation program for the development of northern Central America and southern Mexico, in response to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic and the recent hurricanes in the region.”
Last month, Honduran authorities stopped a caravan before it even reached the Guatemalan border. Last year, other caravans were broken up by Guatemala’s authorities before reaching Mexico.
