On the night of Tuesday, Nov. 23, thousands of migrants in southern Mexico accepted a government offer to leave a U.S.-bound caravan in exchange for Mexican visas. 

 

"The caravan accepted the government's offer of humanitarian visas," Luis Garcia Villagran, director of the Center for Human Dignification A.C. told Univision. "The caravan was disbanded and the migrants will receive humanitarian visas, will be transferred to 10 states and will also be given a work permit."

 

The 10 states selected by the Mexican government are: Puebla, Queretaro, Hidalgo, State of Mexico, Michoacan, Guerrero, Colima, Jalisco and Guanajuato, at the headquarters of Leon and San Miguel de Allende.

 

Mexico's National Institute of Migration (INM) said that the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the State Human Rights Commission (CEDH) will supervise the transfers and the delivery of cards that will allow "regularizing" the stay of foreigners in the country, as guarantors of the commitment. 

 

The caravan is made up of one of the two large groups of migrants — many from Central America and the Caribbean — who left the southern city of Tapachula in recent weeks to undertake on foot the long journey north towards the border with the United States.

 

In exchange for accepting the government's agreement, the organizers pledged not to gather any more caravans in the future, a Mexican migration official speaking on condition of anonymity, said later.

 

However, while most of the migrants have accepted humanitarian visas and withdrawn from the caravan at various parts of the route, "there are still some 800 who will not abandon the trek and continue to travel to demand what they were promised: residency and not humanitarian visas," Garcia said.

 

Migrants have repeatedly expressed skepticism about the possibility of receiving documentation that would stabilize them in Mexico, and organizers say another caravan is already about to leave Tapachula, a major migrant concentration point near the Guatemalan border.