Caravan Migrants Bet Democrats Will Open the Border. The Democrat Set to Fund ICE Says No.

A caravan of hundreds of Central American migrants, most of them from Honduras, walked into Tapachula in southern Mexico on Sunday and set up in the city’s Parque Bicentenario. Many of them say they’re headed for the United States, and they say they started walking now because of last Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Migrants told Reuters they expect President Trump’s border policies to weaken after Democrats won Congress. One Salvadoran man, identified only as Juan, said the Democratic win is a light at the end of the tunnel and that he is sure Trump’s immigration policies will fall, according to Diario Las Américas, which drew on reporting from Diario del Sur and EFE. A Honduran, Carlos, said he hopes Trump’s government ends and its immigration rules are abolished along with it.

There’s a problem with that bet. Democrats don’t take over Congress until January, Trump still runs the border, and the Democrat about to hold ICE’s purse strings just told his own party to forget about reopening it.

How the caravan got here

Friday night. Somewhere between 300 and 500 people crossed the Rodolfo Robles International Bridge from Guatemala into Ciudad Hidalgo, in the border town of Suchiate, according to on-scene video from Diario del Sur reporter Manuel Núñez. The group calls itself “Dios con Nosotros,” or “God With Us.” It stopped overnight in Frontera Hidalgo and Metapa de Domínguez.

Sunday. After walking roughly 35 kilometers, about 22 miles, over two days, the group reached Tapachula. Diario del Sur put the crowd at more than 800. La Jornada and El Universal counted more than 1,000. Diario Las Américas reported at least four police patrol cars and an ambulance escorting the column. The plan is to rest about 48 hours, then head north along Mexico’s Pacific route.

El Heraldo de México reported that a second group of Salvadorans entered over the same weekend, and put the two caravans together at close to 3,000 people. Heraldo said a crossing that size hadn’t been seen at Mexico’s southern border since 2023.

This is the third Honduran caravan of the fall. The first reached Mexico’s southern border in September and the second in October, La Jornada reported. Both walked for three weeks and about 250 kilometers up the Chiapas coast, and both were broken up by Mexico’s National Migration Institute in Arriaga, near the Oaxaca line.

“Light at the end of the tunnel”

The marchers aren’t hiding why they picked this moment. El Universal reported that members of “Dios con Nosotros” believe the Democratic election win could bring a change in U.S. immigration policy toward Central and South America. La Jornada noted the timing directly: caravans hadn’t been seen since mid-2024, also a U.S. election year, and some organizations and activists think this one could be politically motivated.

Many also describe real hardship at home. “Life is a little complicated. Gas is expensive, so is the basic food basket, and pay for workers is very low. Our wages don’t cover surviving day to day, and there’s little work,” 25-year-old Misael Vázquez told La Jornada (translated from Spanish by unga.news). But hard times in Honduras are not new. What’s new is the election, and the marchers themselves keep naming it.

The Democrat who controls the money says no

The man those migrants are counting on may be the wrong Democrat. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, whose district includes Laredo, is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security, and he is poised to become its chairman when Democrats take the House. That gives him major influence over how ICE’s money is spent.

In an interview published Monday by Fox News Digital, Cuellar rejected both the Abolish ICE push from the new crop of Democratic Socialists and a return to the Biden border.

“I don’t believe in defunding ICE and I think the majority of the Democrats do not believe defunding ICE, but there are serious rail guards we need put on ICE,” Cuellar said.

“We just can’t open up the border and just say anybody that wants to claim asylum can come to the borders. That policy under Biden administration — I hope that every Democrat running for national office doesn’t do that anymore,” he said. And more bluntly: “The Biden Administration had it wrong.”

Cuellar wants oversight changes and has criticized some ICE arrests. But on the question the caravan is betting on, whether Democrats will throw the asylum door back open, the Democrat who will hold the checkbook says no. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News Digital that deportations will continue.

Trump’s team: “ZERO CHANCE”

The administration had already answered the caravans before the votes were counted. On Oct. 31 the State Department’s deputy secretary posted that caravans are “meticulously organized on social media” and under the prior administration “became a massive and lucrative business, primarily for criminal enterprises.”

“Under the leadership of @POTUS @realDonaldTrump, all of this stopped immediately and we now have THE MOST SECURE BORDER IN HISTORY,” the post said. “But the criminals and caravan organizers have not vanished or given up. Even now, they continue to organize caravans that have ZERO CHANCE of entering our country.” It credited Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico with checkpoints that “halted mass illegal travel in its tracks.”

Two days earlier, the State Department’s top official for the Western Hemisphere warned that “caravan organizers and participants are on notice: There will be accountability,” saying the U.S. had identified numerous people who recruited, coordinated and directed caravans and “took steps to restrict their ability to travel to our nation.” The U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa has been running the same message in Spanish to Hondurans, including a Nov. 4 warning that a deportation is not temporary and that trying to re-enter without authorization is a crime.

What happens next

The caravan plans to leave Tapachula after its 48-hour rest. The last two Honduran groups got about as far as Arriaga before Mexican immigration agents broke them up, so the next test is whether Mexico does it again.

Even if marchers make it farther, the border they reach will still be Trump’s. The new Congress isn’t sworn in until January, the president keeps control of enforcement, and the Democrat in line to fund ICE says Biden-style open asylum is over. The caravan is betting on a change that its own would-be champions in Washington are already ruling out.