MEXICO CITY-Central American migrants in a caravan that has stopped in Mexico City demanded buses Thursday to take them to the U.S. border, saying it is too cold and dangerous to continue walking and hitchhiking.
About 200 migrants, representing the roughly 5,000 staying in a stadium in the south of Mexico's capital, marched to the United Nations office in Mexico City to make the demand for transportation.
The office was closed when the migrants arrived, but a dozen were received by U.N. representatives at a nearby location, said Ilberto Sosa Montes, a 45-year-old Honduran who is one of caravan's coordinators.
"We need buses to continue traveling," said Milton Benitez, a caravan coordinator. Benitez noted that it would be colder in northern Mexico and it wasn't safe for the migrants to continue along highways, where drug cartels frequently operate.
"This is a humanitarian crisis and they are ignoring it," Benitez said as the group arrived at the U.N. office.
The plan was that when the migrant delegation returned to the stadium, roughly a three-hour walk from the U.N. office, the migrants would gather in an assembly to decide when they would leave Mexico City and what route they would take to the U.S. border. But the meeting with U.N. officials was continuing into the evening Thursday, representatives of the U.N. and the caravan confirmed.
Mexico City authorities say that of the 4,841 registered migrants receiving shelter in a sports complex, 1,726 are under the age of 18, including 310 children under five.
The Mexican government has said most of the migrants have refused offers to stay in Mexico, and only a small number have agreed to return to their home countries. About 85 percent of the migrants are from Honduras, while others are from the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
"California is the longest route but is the best border, while Texas is the closest but the worst" border, said Jose Luis Fuentes of the National Lawyers Guild to gathered migrants.
There have already been reports of migrants on the caravan going missing, though that is often because they hitch rides on trucks that turn off on different routes, leaving them lost.
However, the U.N. human rights agency said its office in Mexico had filed a report with prosecutors in the central state of Puebla about two buses that migrants boarded in the last leg of the trip to Mexico City early this week, and whose whereabouts are not
known.