By Damian Sanchez and Lizbeth Diaz
TAPACHULA, Mexico, Nov 11 (Reuters) – More than a thousand migrants were walking northward on Wednesday in a caravan through southern Mexico, spurred by last week’s Democratic victory in US midterm elections, which raised hopes that US immigration policies could become more welcoming.
The group, estimated by a Chiapas state government source to number about 1,500 people including many families, set off on Tuesday from the city of Tapachula near the Guatemala border. With possessions in backpacks, parents carried small children in their arms, in strollers or on their shoulders.
Tapachula has long been a key transit point for migrants from Central America heading to the United States.
Due to US entry restrictions and deportations, thousands have become stranded there, where they report a scarcity of jobs, healthcare and schools. Such caravans are common, but many migrants saw new reason for optimism after last week’s US elections.
Democrats won control of the US Congress as voters delivered a sharp rebuke to President Donald Trump and his agenda, which includes immigration policies that have increased raids and arrests across parts of the country.
The migrants, mostly from Central America, hope the political shift could open pathways for them to live and work in the United States.
“There might be a light at the end of the tunnel, a way for us to get in,” said caravan participant Cesar Sandoval, a 47-year-old Nicaraguan citizen who was deported from the United States a few months ago.
“We believe the Democrats will help us… with God’s help,” he added before the group, dubbed “God With Us,” departed.
The migrants initially aim to reach Mexico City, more than 1,000 km (621 miles) away, to seek assistance from the Mexican federal government and protection from being detained while traveling toward the US border.
The journey to the capital is likely to take at least several weeks, and the migrants carried water in the hot temperatures typical of southern Mexico.
Migrants said the group includes many victims of kidnapping or other crimes in Mexico, and they seek a chance to obtain asylum in the United States.
“For 16 years, I have carried this nightmare in my head. I only ask that the President (Claudia Sheinbaum) be moved and allow us to move forward,” said Billy Noe Martinez, a Honduran migrant who survived the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas.
“I cannot return to my country because people there are looking for me to kill me, and the same is true in Mexico,” he said, recalling that he witnessed fellow migrants being mutilated while still alive and women raped.
Despite the migrants’ hopes to enter the US, analysts said potential US policy changes are unlikely to be swift.
“As long as Trump remains president, the deportations will not stop,” said Ivan Porraz, a researcher at the College of the Southern Border (Ecosur), who warned that human smugglers could exploit migrants.
(Reporting by Damian Sanchez in Tapachula and Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; writing by Paolo Laudani; editing by Natalia Siniawski and Cynthia Osterman)
