Sheinbaum says 24 migrant caravans have broken up under Trump
None is heading for the U.S. border now, the Mexican president said. The figure comes from the Interior Ministry, with no breakdown by date, place or headcount.
Mexico's Interior Ministry counts 24 migrant caravans that have broken up since Donald Trump returned to the White House, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday at her morning news conference, according to the official transcript.
"There are 24 caravans," she said. Most of them stayed in Chiapas, the southern border state, and none got farther north than Oaxaca. Right now, she added, no caravan is moving toward the U.S. border.
She credited the outcome to the information migrants receive that crossing into the United States is not possible, and to the care they are given in southern Mexico.
Of the two caravans reported Thursday, one has dissolved and most of its members went back to their home countries, she said. The other is "just now forming."
Sheinbaum also walked back her own phrase "we have detained," calling it poorly worded. What happened, she said, is that the caravans fell apart; nobody detained them.
The figure comes without public backing. No document was released, nor the date the count starts, nor how many people were in each caravan. "Broke up" is undefined, too: a voluntary dispersal, a return home, a transfer and a containment are different things.
It arrived a day after Trump threatened to double tariffs on Mexico unless the government stopped the caravans, with no deadline or legal mechanism. Sheinbaum said she did not want to "get into a debate" with him, and that she expects to meet Trump at the G20 in December.
