Remembering the migrant caravan

Editor’s note: As we come to the end of the year, Conversation editors take a look back at the stories that – for them – exemplified 2018.

Catesby Holmes

Global Affairs Editor

A mother, determined and frantic, sprints with her two children, escaping a trail of tear gas. She wears a “Frozen” T-shirt. Both girls are in diapers; one runs barefoot.

In an age when photos arise, shape-shift and disappear with the swipe of a thumb, this image was indelible. It captured the moment, in November 2018, that Maria Meza and her twins were gassed at the U.S.-Mexico border after traveling 3,000 miles by foot, train and truck from violence-plagued Honduras.


At the border between the U.S and Mexico in Tijuana, Nov. 25, 2018 (Reuters/Kim Kyung Hoon)

In a year of harrowing immigration news, the Central American caravan was not the biggest story. That was the Trump administration’s policy of detaining migrant children. What the caravan story exposed, singularly, was the desperation driving international migration.

As international editor at The Conversation, I wanted our coverage to follow the facts that explained this human drama – not amplify political rhetoric about refugees.

1. A Central American tragedy

The caravan began on Oct. 13 in Honduras with about 200 people. As it moved through Honduras and Guatemala, thousands more joined its ranks, fleeing one of the world’s deadliest regions.

El Salvador’s 2016 murder rate was almost triple that of New York City during its bloodiest years, writes Julio Ernesto Acuna Garcia. Youth homicides are particularly high.

“Central American children are 10 times more likely to be murdered than children in the United States,” Acuna Garcia says.

Families abandon their homes because staying is more dangerous than leaving. Migration represents an agonizing decision, tracked, evaluated and judged in newspaper headlines worldwide.

2. Safety in numbers

President Donald Trump saw the caravan differently, tweeting that the group was “an invasion” of “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners.”

So I asked migration scholar Karen Jacobson of Tufts University to explain why migrants often travel in groups.

Her answer: safety.

“Whether crossing Central America, the Sahara desert or the mountains of Afghanistan, migrants are regularly extorted by criminals, militias and corrupt immigration officials who know migrants make easy targets: They carry cash but not weapons,” Jacobson wrote.

3. Dangers of Mexico

Group travel couldn’t keep the caravan totally safe.

In early November, human rights scholar Luis Gómez Romero reported that two trucks had disappeared from the caravan in Veracruz, Mexico. A survivor told officials that “65 children and seven women were sold” to armed men.

“On average, 12 people disappear each day in Mexico, victims of a raging three-way war among the Mexican armed forces, organized crime and drug cartels,” Gómez Romero wrote. “Nearly 22,000 people were murdered in Mexico in the first eight months of 2018.”

People missing for more than 24 hours are rarely found in Mexico – alive or at all.

4. Asylum challenges

Central Americans fleeing violence have the right to claim asylum in the U.S., but proving they have a “credible fear” of persecution is difficult.

Families tormented by gangs back home “struggle to fit their experiences into the boxes created by [refugee] law,” says Abigail Stepnitz of the University of California-Berkeley.

Three-quarters of Central American asylum applications are ultimately denied.

5. Globalization’s victims

Trump often portrays such migrants as a foreign problem unfairly “dumped” at America’s doorstep.

This view ignores the global forces that connect nations, says immigration researcher Felipe Filomeno, from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

“The extreme violence, environmental disasters and grinding poverty that drive people from places like Guatemala, Honduras and Afghanistan are largely the result of global phenomena like colonialism, climate change and trade.”

That means rich countries – which created and profited from these processes – share responsibility for “the people displaced by globalization.”

On Dec. 17, Maria Meza’s family crossed into the United States as asylum seekers, The New York Times reported. Their claims of gang persecution may take years to decide.

Central American kids come to the US fleeing record-high youth murder rates at home

Julio Ernesto Acuna Garcia, Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador)

Central American youth are 10 times more likely to be murdered than children in the US. Child homicides in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are rising even as other violence declines.

Migrants travel in groups for a simple reason: safety

Karen Jacobsen, Tufts University

More than two-thirds of Central American migrants will experience violence on their journey through Mexico, from robbery and extortion to rape. Caravans create safety in numbers.

Dozens of migrants disappear in Mexico as Central American caravan pushes northward

Luis Gómez Romero, University of Wollongong

Two trucks carrying migrants have gone missing in Veracruz, Mexico. A witness says that '65 children and seven women were sold' to a band of armed men. Other caravan members have reached the border.

Migrant caravan members have right to claim asylum – here’s why getting it will be hard

Abigail Stepnitz, University of California, Berkeley

A scholar who has worked with asylum-seekers for a decade explains why the legal path to safety is challenging for the migrants currently traveling through Mexico.

Who is responsible for migrants?

Felipe A. Filomeno, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Donald Trump portrays migrants as a foreign problem 'dumped' on America's doorstep. That view ignores the global forces that bind nations together, including trade, climate change and colonization.

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