What is the Migrant Caravan heading to the Mexico-US border?
The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday
Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US
Hundreds of refugees and migrants that were part of a caravan travelling from Central America has reached the city of Tijuana at the US-Mexico border.
In joining the more than 750 people that had already reached the city, there are now more than 1,500 migrants - many of them are fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Around 6,000 troops deployed by President Donald Trump are waiting on the other side of the border, having spent time building concrete barriers and erecting razor-wire fences to keep people out.
With US border inspectors at the main crossing into San Diego processing only about 100 asylum claims a day, it could take weeks if not months to process those who are part of the caravan that departed from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, more than a month ago.
Another 2,000 more refugees and migrants are expected to to arrive in Tijuana by the weekend.
Tijuana's factories are always looking for workers but the prospect of thousands more destitute Central Americans has posed new challenges.
Central American migrants trek north to seek a better life
Show all 8
Delia Avila, director of Tijuana's family services department, who is helping spearhead the city's response, said migrants who can arrange legal status in Mexico are welcome to stay.
“Tijuana is a land of migrants. Tijuana is a land that has known what it is to embrace thousands of co-nationals and also people from other countries,” Mr Avila told the Associated Press.
Oscar Zapata, 31, reached the Tijuana bus station at 2am from Guadalajara with his wife and their three children, ages 4, 5 and 12.
Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events
Back home in La Ceiba, Honduras, he was selling pirated CDs and DVDs in the street when two gangs demanded “protection” money. He had already seen a colleague gunned down on a street corner because he couldn't pay.
When he heard about the caravan on the television last month he was quick to move. “It was the opportunity to get out,” Mr Zapata said.
Mr Zapata said he hopes to join a brother in Los Angeles but has not yet decided on his next move. Like many others, he planned to wait in Tijuana for others in the caravan to arrive and gather more information before seeking asylum in the United States.
Tijuana is facing the issue of what to do when the final sections of the caravan arrive in the city, which may being the total up to 8,000 or more people.
"No city in the world is prepared to receive this number of migrants," Mario Osuna, the Tijuana city social development director told the AP. He said the city hopes the federal government "will start legalising these people immediately" so they could get jobs and earn a living in Tijuana.
More than 3,000 other refugees and migrants are on the way and are expected to reach the border on Friday in buses organized by charities, private donors and local authorities.
Recent polls show a sizeable minority of Mexicans oppose helping the migrants and refugees as they head northward to the United States.
A survey of 1,000 Mexicans by polling firm Consulta Mitofsky last month showed that 51.4 per cent were in favor of helping or protecting the migrants, while 33.8 per cent took the opposite view, believing that they should be pressured to return home. The remaining respondents expressed no opinion.
Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, has said that there is "no question" the migrant caravan of Central American asylum-seekers was politicised before this year's midterm elections.
“There’s no question that the issue of the caravans was an issue that was inflated for political purposes, to influence the midterm elections," Ms Harris told reporters in a brief interview.
Mexican Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete said job fairs would be held around the country from Thursday to lay out opportunities for Central Americans, reiterating earlier government offers of work.
Politicians around the world are ratcheting up the anti-immigration rhetoric during campaigning and to achieve policy goals at the risk of sending humanity into a "moral abyss", human trafficking experts have warned.
Anti-immigration language - seen during the midterm US elections this month and the ongoing Brexit talks in Europe- is amplified by increased attacks on journalists' integrity, said Nazir Afzal, a former British prosecutor.
"Until the midterm elections, we kept hearing about this caravan of refugees travelling through Central America full of smallpox and Muslim jihadis," he said at the Thomson Reuters Foundation's annual Trust Conference in London.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies