A group of about 2,000 migrants in a caravan heading for the United States forced its way through a formation of Mexican interior police in riot gear on Saturday in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins tweeted footage of the crowd breaking through the lines of interior police, who are specifically tasked with controlling migration within the country.
“BREAKING: Migrant Caravan in Mexico encounters Mexico’s @INAMI_mx forces… #BorderCrisis,” Jenkins tweeted.
The video shows hundreds of interior police, belonging to Instituto Nacional de Migración, (the National Institute of Migration), attempting to block a group of migrants moving north. The INM police are a part of Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior that responds to migrant groups passing through Mexico’s interior.
In the video, the wall of Mexican riot police holds for a moment before a crowd breaks through the police lines.
Another video showed dozens of migrants linking arms at the front of the group as they approached the police line. They then clashed with the police before breaking through.
Fox News reported the migrant group, consisting of about 2,000 people, organized in the city of Tapachula in Chiapas, Mexico. The southern city is situated on the Mexican-Guatemalan border.
According to Fox News, organizers for this particular migrant caravan required attendees to register with a QR code on their phones or a web link in order to participate. Jenkins reported the caravan is largely comprised of Central Americans, South Americans and Haitians.
The migrant caravan encountered the INM police within hours of departing from their starting point in Tapachula. According to Fox News, the police blockade did not hold out for long.
Jenkins tweeted another video with caravan leader Irineo Mujica. “BREAKING: The Leader of the Migrant Caravan Irineo Mujica marching and calling out @POTUS@VP@SecMayorkas#BorderCrisis.”
In the video, Mujica said the Mexican government should give migrants papers to live and work in Mexico.
“They should give them papers here, they should give them the opportunity to work here,” Mujica said. “Because a lot of them don’t want to go to the U.S., but the Biden administration, with this administration, it’s like pulling them like cattle.”
Several people in the migrant caravan were seen carrying American flags and signs with President Joe Biden’s name on them.
The Tapachula caravan comes as the U.S. has seen a record-breaking rise in illegal border crossings within the last year. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, U.S. border officials have apprehended, turned back or expelled more than 1.7 million people at the U.S. southwest land border in the last 12 months, including 1.5 million people since January of this year.
