A Caravan Thinks the Midterms Opened the Border. Homan: ‘The White House Is Red, Bright Red.’

The people walking north out of Tapachula this week are carrying strollers, backpacks and one big assumption: that last week’s midterms changed the rules at the U.S. border. Tom Homan went on television Wednesday to tell them it didn’t.

“Congress may be more blue, Texas may be more blue, but the White House is red, bright red,” the White House border czar said on Fox News. “These caravans come to the border all they want. They’re not going to be released in the United States.”

That clip, posted by the White House’s own rapid-response account, pulled more than 150,000 views and about 7,600 likes within hours. It’s a short answer to a long walk.

A caravan named ‘God With Us’

The group calls itself “Dios con Nosotros.” Most of its members set out from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, crossed Guatemala, and entered Mexico illegally at Suchiate late Friday night, according to El Universal. They walked about 35 kilometers over two days, sleeping in Frontera Hidalgo and Metapa de Domínguez, and reached Tapachula on Sunday.

They camped for two days in the city’s Bicentenario park, a spot where caravans usually gather. On Tuesday afternoon they set off again up the coastal highway, walking at night to keep the heat off the children. Haitians and Cubans who had grown tired of waiting on Mexican asylum paperwork joined them in Tapachula.

Nobody agrees on the headcount. El Universal put it at more than 500 people leaving Tapachula. Diario de Chiapas said more than a thousand. Other Mexican reports said it could be as large as 2,000. Mexican officials sent the National Guard and highway safety crews to walk alongside them.

This is the third caravan out of Honduras in recent months. The first reached Mexico’s southern border in September and the second in October. Both walked roughly 250 kilometers up the Chiapas coast over three weeks before Mexico’s immigration agency broke them up at Arriaga, near the Oaxaca line, according to El Universal.

What the migrants are saying out loud

They aren’t hiding why they picked this moment. Migrants told Reuters they expected President Trump’s border policies to weaken after the midterms. El Universal reported that members of the group believe the election results “could make entry easier” for migrants.

El Universal also noted something worth sitting with. From mid-2024 until now, Central American caravans had mostly disappeared from that road. They came back right as the U.S. went to the polls again.

Homan has a name for that. “We call it the Biden effect,” he told Fox’s America Reports. “I knew if the Democrats could control the Congress, this would happen.”

Why Congress can’t open the gate

Here’s the part the caravan’s organizers seem to have missed. The new Congress doesn’t even take office until January. And border enforcement isn’t run out of the Capitol. It’s run by the executive branch, using laws that are already on the books.

“Elections don’t change laws,” Homan said. “The same laws we’ve been enforcing in the last two years we’re gonna enforce for the next two years, and they can’t stop that.”

He also spelled out what actually happens to someone who reaches the line. “They’re going to be turned around, or prosecuted then turned around, because we will charge them with a crime, so they can sit in jail, serve their sentence before they’re deported,” he said. “We’re not giving one inch on this border.”

Even an immigration lawyer quoted in Mexican coverage, Kathia Quirós, warned migrants on Noticias Telemundo that “la frontera sigue súper cerrada.” The border is still very closed. That’s not a talking point from the White House. That’s a lawyer who represents migrants telling them the truth before they spend weeks on the road.

Mexico’s piece of this

Homan put pressure on Mexico too. Crossing Mexico without a transit visa is against Mexican law, he pointed out, so the caravan is breaking Mexico’s rules on the way to breaking ours.

“Mexico needs to step up like they did in Trump 45,” he said. “They need to put troops on their southern border, northern border.”

Mexico has done some of that. Its immigration agency moved about 180 people to the Siglo XXI detention station in Tapachula and stopped another group of roughly 100 at Suchiate, according to Mexican reports compiled by A Lo Claro. But it has also handed earlier caravan members permits that let them travel on to Mexico City, Monterrey and Tamaulipas. That’s how a caravan broken up in Chiapas turns into people showing up near Texas a few weeks later.

The math of a long walk

Tapachula sits about 45 kilometers from Guatemala. By road, it’s something like a thousand miles or more from the Rio Grande. The two earlier caravans needed three weeks just to cover the Chiapas coast. Anyone in this group who actually makes it to the U.S. line will be showing up weeks from now at the earliest, and they’ll meet the same administration and the same rules that have held the border tight since January 2025.

Homan’s message to them was blunt. “Come all you want,” he said. “You’re going to be highly disappointed.”

It’s a cruel thing to let families walk a thousand miles on a rumor. Whoever told these people the midterms opened the border did them no favors. The man in charge of the border just told them the truth, on camera, before they got any further north.