New 1,500-strong migrant caravan seen walking toward US southern border hours after boat full of asylum seekers lands in affluent San Diego community

A caravan consisting of about 1,500 migrants, mostly from Central and South America, are trekking through southern MexicoThe group departed the southern city of Tapachula and walked nearly 25 miles to the town of Huixtla, where they planned to spend the night FridayNo caravan has ever completed the 1,000-mile journey from southern Mexico to the country's northern border region with the United States

At least 1,500 migrants have formed the first caravan of 2024 as part of an attempt to reach the Mexico’s northern border region with the United States.

The group, mainly Central and South American migrants, had grown tired of the lagging Mexican immigration system in Tapachula, a city in the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.

The migrants took off by foot Thursday and reached the town of Huixtla on Friday.

The plan, local media outlets reported, is for migrants to spend the night there resting before departing for Escuintla in the morning.

Ezequiel Sánchez said he abandoned his native Venezuela along with his wife and one-year-old son.

Migrants walk down a road in Huixtla, a city in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, on Friday. The group is part of the first caravan to form in 2024 and they hope to reach Mexico’s northern border region with the United States

Migrants walk across a shallow part of the Rio Grande while trying to reach the United States border

He said the political and economic crisis that has destabilized the country under the regime of socialist President Nicolás Maduro was one of the factors that has the family searching for a new beginning in the United States.

Sánchez heard that other migrants had waited as many as eight months Mexico’s National Migration Institute worked on their requests for humanitarian visas, which permit them to transit freely.

‘We dd not want to wait,’ he said. ‘There are no jobs nor do we have a place to live. We decided it is better to get ahead in the caravan, we want to go up to the United States.’

Migrant Alexander Girón opted for leaving his native El Salvador because his former employment did not cover basic necessities.

In previous years, many people left El Salvador because of gang-related violence. But even though the Salvadoran government has brought down the homicide rate with a tough crackdown on gangs that has imprisoned tens of thousands, Girón said he still had to leave.

‘Safety isn’t enough if there is no work,’ said Gíron, who was traveling with his wife and two teenage sons in hopes of reaching the US. ‘Wages just can’t keep pace, everything is very expensive. We are going to look for work and to give our sons a better life.’

The first caravan of the year comes as migrants continue to find ways on how to unlawfully enter the United States.

More than 20 migrants were filmed storming the beach La Jolla, California, an extremely wealthy suburb of San Diego on Wednesday morning and disappearing into the southern California enclave, where homes go for a median price of $2.2million.

The exclusive footage was shot by NewsNation’s National Correspondent Jorge Ventura and captured the group arriving on the shore on a vessel before they took off running into the neighborhood.

Migrants carry a child while walking in a caravan Friday in Huixtla, Mexico after it formed a day earlier. The group consists of about 1,500 people, most from Central and South America, who planned to rest in Huixtla on Friday and then continue their trek to the city of Escuintla on Saturday

The first migrant caravan of 2024 formed in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on Thursday and by Friday had advanced to Huixtla, where they planned to spend the night before hitting the road again Saturday morning for their trek to the municipality of Escuintla

Migrants, most from Central and South America, lie on the road pavement in Huixtla, Mexico on Friday on their second day of their 1,000-mile journey to the United States border

A Christmas Eve caravan once numbered about 6,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Central America. But after New Year´s Day, the Mexican government persuaded them to give up their trek, promising they would get some kind of unspecified documents.

By the next week, about 2,000 migrants from that caravan resumed their journey through southern Mexico, after participants were left without the papers the Mexican government appeared to have promised.

That group wanted transit or exit visas allowing them to take buses or trains to the U.S. border.

However, they were granted papers restricting holders to Mexico’s southernmost Chiapas state, where work is scarce and local residents are largely poor. By last week, only a hundred or two had made it to the border between neighboring Oaxaca state and the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, mainly on buses.

Mexico in the past let migrants go through, trusting they would tire themselves out walking along the highway. No migrant caravan has ever walked the full 1,000 miles to the U.S. southern border

U.S. officials met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in December to discuss ways on how Mexico could control the flow of migrants.

López Obrador confirmed that U.S. officials want Mexico to do more to block migrants at its border with Guatemala, or make it more difficult for them to move across Mexico by train or in trucks or buses – a policy known as ‘contention.’

Mexico felt pressure to address the problem after U.S. officials briefly closed two vital Texas railway border crossings in December, claiming they were overwhelmed by processing migrants. That put a chokehold on Mexican exports heading to the U.S. and on grain moving south for Mexican livestock.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said the spike in border crossings seen in December across the southwest U.S. border coincided with a period when the ‘immigration enforcement agency in Mexico was not funded.’

López Obrador later said the financial shortfall that led Mexico’s immigration agency to suspend deportations and other operations had been resolved and some deportations were later resumed.