Migrant Caravan Includes Countless Prior Deportees: 'They Catch You, and You Try to Get Back'

Brittany M. Hughes | October 23, 2018
DONATE
Font Size

Remember that caravan of destitute women and children fleeing poverty and gang violence in Central America that’s now marching on the U.S. border?

Well, they’re definitely not all destitute women and children.

In a new report, the Washington Post details the general makeup of the 7,000-plus hoard currently carving a path through Mexico on its way to the Southwest U.S. border, where they’ll reportedly demand to be let in because...well, they say so.

According to WaPo, the band of travelers is comprised of women, children…and even more previous deportees.

"Many of the migrants here had previously lived in the United States, for years or even decades, joining the caravan to reunite with their children, or to resume old jobs. They were undeterred by the American authorities who had apprehended them or the U.S. president who promised to keep them out again."

“It’s time for me to go back to the United States. It’s a country where I can live my life, unlike Guatemala,” said Job Reyes, 36, who had spent most of his childhood and teenage years in Los Angeles, attending kindergarten through high school there.

Another man, Imner Anthony Fuentes, 29, said he’d already been deported six times, most recently getting kicked out from Birmingham, Alabama a whole five months ago. Even still, he’d joined up with the caravan to get back to his son and American girlfriend, who still live in the U.S.

“That’s just how it is,” Fuentes told the Washington Post. “They catch you, and you try to get back.”

The Post explained that the vast majority of caravan travelers aren’t planning to apply for asylum at all, but rather are illegal aliens who’d already been deported and are trying to get back to their old jobs and U.S.-based family members. In fact, many of the repeat crossers say they already know how they’ll plan to get across, as they’ve already made the arduous journey before.

“The deportees and returnees were clear about their intentions to cross the border illegally, hoping to slip between patrol officers,” WaPo reports.

Far from the ragtag group of struggling women and toddlers that's been described in the media, it's becoming increasingly clear that the thousands of marchers heading this way aren't innocents fleeing gang violence, but rather are grown men hellbent on violating U.S. immigration law regardless of the consequences.

donate