Migrant Caravans Head North With Renewed Hope, but Enforcement Barriers Make U.S. Arrival Unlikely

Mexico City | Nov. 13, 2026 | 4 min read

The Democratic sweep of Congress in this month’s midterm elections has revived hopes among some migrants that they might still reach the United States, producing a surge of optimism reminiscent of the mood after Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020.

At least two caravans have set out northward. But the border rules they now face are far different from those in place six years ago. In fact, there is little reason to believe Mexican officials would even allow them to reach the border to test those rules for themselves.

Groups of migrants traveling together through Mexico toward the United States are not new; several have already formed this year. But the perceived political shift in the U.S. that prompted many people to join the current caravans will confront a stark reality: immigration enforcement and policy in both the U.S. and Mexico have changed drastically in recent years. Mexico has largely worked to contain migrants in its south, while the U.S. has all but closed off pathways to asylum.

On Nov. 12, President Donald Trump described the caravans as “huge” and warned Mexico through a social media post that tariffs would be “IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED” if the convoys were not stopped.

“Since President Trump took office, not a single migrant caravan has reached the northern border,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said at a news conference the same day.

Damian Sanchez/Reuters

Migrants in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, take part in a caravan called “Dios Con Nosotros” (“God Is With Us”) as they march north toward the United States on Nov. 11, 2026.

The caravans have no realistic chance of reaching the U.S. border, according to Laura Velasco Ortiz, a migration expert at Mexico’s College of the Northern Border. “The political composition in the U.S. may have changed in the midterm election, but Trump’s still president,” she said, pointing to Trump’s use of tariffs and trade negotiations to pressure Mexico on issues including migration, drug trafficking, and water.

Changes to Mexico’s migration policy

Mexican authorities were already breaking up caravans, militarizing migration enforcement, moving migrants from northern Mexico to the south, and restricting movement out of the south long before Trump began his second term.

In 2014, responding to an increase in unaccompanied minors migrating from Central America through Mexico, then-President Enrique Peña Nieto introduced Programa Frontera Sur, which was intended to regulate migration at Mexico’s border with Guatemala. The program led to more immigration raids and checkpoints.

Peña Nieto’s successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, changed Mexico’s approach to migration enforcement even more radically. Between 2018 and 2024, Mexico shifted from deporting migrants to “containing” them, whether through longer detentions or by moving migrants to different cities, usually farther south inside Mexico.

In 2023, Mexico detained nearly 14 times as many migrants as it deported, according to a report published this year in the academic journal Migraciones Internacionales.

“The Mexican government has learned how to disperse the caravans, and they won’t let them get beyond Oaxaca” in southern Mexico or, at most, Mexico City, said Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Institute for Women in Migration, a Mexican nongovernmental organization. That has been the reality for most caravans in recent years, she said, especially when combined with “the Trump 2.0 pressure on Mexico.”

Even if the next U.S. president holds radically different views toward migrants, Velasco does not expect Mexico to dramatically change its own migration policies. “I think we’re seeing a shift in Mexico to think more about integration” of migrants, rather than simply seeing them as people in transit, she said. “There are people who have stayed in big numbers in distinct parts of the country who need work, housing, and access to health.” She also estimated that about 60,000 migrants are currently stranded in southern Mexico because of the country’s containment policy.

In his second term, Trump has moved beyond his predecessor’s policies of restricting or managing asylum-seekers at the U.S. southern border to essentially preventing people from requesting protection at the border at all. According to Customs and Border Protection data, encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border totaled roughly 2.47 million people in fiscal year 2023, a record. In 2025, Trump’s first year back in office, that number fell to about 443,000 people crossing without authorization or deemed inadmissible at a port of entry, including asylum-seekers.

Relatively small caravans

More than 50 caravans involving an estimated 70,000 people departed from southern Mexico between 2019 and 2025, according to the Migraciones Internacionales report, titled “Reforming the Vertical Border? From Deportations to Containment Within Mexican Territory.”

The current caravans are relatively small. One, which began in Honduras and picked up more people in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, is estimated by the Chiapas state government to include around 1,500 people. A smaller group was stopped by Mexican security forces after crossing from Guatemala, according to local media reports.

Some 38 migrants have been detained, according to the Colectivo De Monitoreo Frontera Sur, a network of organizations documenting abuses of migrant rights. The group fears that Trump’s threats, and Mexico’s response, are putting migrant lives at risk.

“We call on the U.S. government to halt the discourse of hate and threats that are putting people in need of international protection at risk,” the group said in a Nov. 12 news release.

The caravan known as “God Is With Us” has an initial goal of reaching Mexico City, a journey that could take weeks, where migrants plan to seek assistance from the Mexican government in continuing north, members of the caravan told Reuters.

“There might be a light at the end of the tunnel, a way for us to get in” to the U.S., Nicaraguan Cesar Sandoval, who was recently deported from the U.S., told Al Jazeera. “We believe the Democrats will help us.”

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