Ricardo Santiago, who heads MSF’s operations in southern Mexico, anticipates extra migrants and asylum seekers like Ramirez will race to achieve the border over the subsequent month, earlier than Trump takes workplace.
That may imply a reversal of present tendencies. September noticed a four-year low in apprehensions on the US border, in accordance with authorities figures. Nonetheless, Santiago mentioned he has noticed the numbers of migrants climbing once more.
“The caravans have gotten bigger and bigger,” Santiago advised Al Jazeera. “If in September and October they have been made up of some hundred folks, now they’re made up of 1000’s.”
A whole bunch have sought medical consideration from his 16-person MSF crew in Santiago Niltepec, as a “migrant caravan” handed by way of the town in November.
Perez and his household have been a part of the current caravan, which Santiago estimated to comprise 2,000 folks.
Caravans started forming in 2018 as a whole bunch of migrants and asylum seekers banded collectively for security. The teams supplied a substitute for the human traffickers who charged 1000’s of {dollars} for protected transit to the US border.
Members of November’s caravan estimated they walked between 30 and 40 kilometres per day — between 19 and 25 miles — typically travelling by night time to keep away from scorching daytime temperatures.
Nonetheless, specialists say the teams typically disintegrate earlier than reaching their vacation spot. And the caravans, irrespective of their quantity, are nonetheless weak to unscrupulous authorities and Mexican drug cartels that use violence to demand bribes and ransoms.
“There was a notable enhance in sufferers who’ve skilled violent assaults in November,” Santiago advised Al Jazeera.
Typically, members of the caravan get into fights amongst themselves, he defined. However the principal hazard comes from outdoors teams just like the cartels.
Santiago mentioned he has heard reviews of “assaults in opposition to younger folks, boys, ladies, ladies and men of all ages who’re uncovered to kidnappings, extortion and sexual violence”.
