MEXICO CITY (The Thursday Times) — About 1,500 migrants walking north through southern Mexico have become the target of a new tariff threat from US President Donald Trump, who has warned that duties on Mexican goods will be doubled unless Mexico stops the caravans.
The caravan, called “God With Us”, set off on Tuesday from Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border in Chiapas state. A Chiapas state government source put the number of people taking part at about 1,500, including many families. Most are Hondurans, with Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans, and Ecuadorians also among them. They say they aim first to reach Mexico City, more than 1,000 kilometres away, a journey likely to take weeks.
It is the largest caravan to leave Chiapas this year. Rights activist Luis Villagrán counts it as the 24th since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office two years ago; the federal government puts the figure at 10. Villagrán said another group of about 2,000 people was forming in Honduras.
Many of the migrants said the Democratic Party’s victory in the November 3 midterm elections, in which it took control of both chambers of Congress, had given them fresh hope of reaching the United States. Trump, who called the results a “giant step back” for America, responded on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.
“Huge caravans are forming and beginning their illegal march through Mexico. Many of the people in these Caravans are those that various countries don’t want,” he wrote. “MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED.”
Trump blamed the Democrats for what he called an “invasion” and said Mexico, the outgoing and incoming governors of Texas, the Border Patrol, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement had all been warned. “There will be no leniency,” he wrote. The post came days after he named Stephen Miller, the architect of his hard-line immigration policies, as White House chief of staff.
Sheinbaum says no caravan has reached the border
Sheinbaum answered at her daily news briefing on Thursday. “Not a single migrant caravan has reached the north” since January 2025, she said.
She said an earlier caravan of about 600 people had largely broken up after its members were told that reaching the United States would be “very difficult”, leaving fewer than 100 in the town of Arriaga. Officials were also talking to a group of several hundred Honduran migrants and encouraging them to go home.
“We inform people in the caravan that if their goal is to reach the United States, they will not be able to achieve it because that possibility does not exist,” Sheinbaum said, adding that they were being offered a safe return home or the chance to stay in Mexico under certain conditions. She ruled out using force to break up the caravans, saying Mexican authorities had “extensive experience” in accompanying migrants.
Mexican forces have already stopped one smaller group. On Tuesday, the National Guard, immigration officers, and Chiapas police blocked about 100 Central American migrants who had crossed the Suchiate River from Guatemala, detaining about 40 of them.
After crossing Chiapas, migrants are usually moved on to Tuxtla Gutiérrez or the city of Oaxaca, where they are normally given a 30-day transit permit. The “God With Us” caravan rested in the town of Huixtla this week, where medical teams treated walkers, before planning to move on.
Tariff talks at stake
The threat lands in the middle of talks between Mexico and the United States on cutting tariffs Washington imposed last year, alongside a review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that began in July.
Mexico is seeking big reductions in a 10% tariff on Mexican goods not covered by the trade agreement and a 25% duty on medium and heavy trucks. The talks have also covered a 50% tariff on steel and aluminium and a 17% countervailing duty on Mexican tomatoes. The United States is Mexico’s largest trading partner.
Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump has scrapped the asylum routes opened under former President Joe Biden, declared an emergency on the southern border, and sped up deportations. Arrests at the border have stayed at historically low levels since February 2025. The new Democratic majorities have not yet taken their seats, so no federal immigration law has changed.
In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa won the governorship, becoming the first Latina to lead the state and ending 12 years of Republican Greg Abbott, who poured state money into troops and a border wall. Hinojosa called those measures “political grandstanding” during the campaign but has not yet set out her own plans. She takes office in January.
