Mexican stand-off: migrant caravan stuck on bridge in Guatemala after storming border

Riot police on Mexico’s side of the border keeping thousands of mainly Honduran migrants at bay

Travellers, who are heading for the US, hurled rocks at Mexican police officers after breaking through roadblock

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A frame grab from video provided by Televisa showing migrants heading for the US stuck on the border bridge between Guatemala and Mexico on October 19, 2018. Photo: AP

Published: 1:00pm, 20 Oct 2018Updated: 8:36pm, 20 Oct 2018

Thousands of migrants forced their way through Guatemala’s northwestern border on Friday and flooded onto a bridge leading to Mexico, where riot police battled them back, stopping their trek towards the United States – at least temporarily.

The caravan of mainly Honduran migrants, whose journey has triggered escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric from US President Donald Trump, surged through a series of police lines and barricades up to the final fence on Mexico’s southern border.

The Honduran migrant caravan heading to the US as it reaches the Guatemala-Mexico international bridge in Tecun Uman, Guatemala on October 19, 2018. Photo: AFP

There – at the far end of the bridge over the Suchiate River, which forms the western part of the Mexico-Guatemala border – they hurled rocks and other objects at hundreds of riot police, who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Multiple migrants, police and journalists were wounded.

“We’re running away from violence and we arrive here and they just hit us more,” sobbed 28-year-old Marta Ornelas Cazares, who was nursing her baby – but had lost her other two children, aged 10 and 15, in the turmoil. “I don’t know what happened, I thought we were going to cross peacefully and then suddenly there were rocks flying and tear gas.”