Trump Threatens to Double Tariffs on Mexico If It Does Not Stop Migrant Caravan

President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to double tariffs on Mexico if the country does not stop a caravan of migrants walking north toward the United States, and he warned that the migrants will not be allowed to enter.

"Huge CARAVANS are forming and beginning their illegal march through Mexico," Trump wrote in a Thursday morning post on Truth Social. "Many of the people in these Caravans are those that various countries don't want, 'Send them to America,' they say, but they will not be accepted."

The warning to Mexico

"MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED," Trump wrote. He said Mexico, the governor of Texas, the Border Patrol and ICE had all been informed, and added: "There will be no leniency!"

The post opened with "Here we go again!" "With the perceived loss by the Republicans in the Midterms, I WAS NOT ON THE BALLOT, the INVASION of our Country is taking place again," he wrote. Trump did not name a specific tariff rate or a deadline for Mexico in the post. Reuters and Fox News both reported the threat on Thursday morning. Mexico's government had not publicly responded in the initial reports.

The caravan walking north

The group Trump pointed to is a caravan of about 1,500 people, most of them from Central America and many of them families, a Chiapas state government source told Reuters. The migrants set off on Tuesday, November 10, from Tapachula, a city in southern Mexico near the Guatemala border. Parents carried small children in their arms, in strollers and on their shoulders, with their belongings in backpacks. The caravan calls itself "God With Us."

Its first goal is Mexico City, more than 1,000 km (621 miles) away, where the migrants hope to seek help from the Mexican federal government and protection from being detained while they travel toward the US border. The walk to the capital is expected to take at least several weeks, in the hot weather of southern Mexico.

"There might be a light at the end of the tunnel, a way for us to get in," said Cesar Sandoval, a 47-year-old Nicaraguan man who was deported from the United States a few months ago. "We believe the Democrats will help us, with God's help," he said before the group left Tapachula.

Why they are walking

Tapachula has long been a main transit point for Central American migrants heading to the United States. Thousands have become stranded there under US entry restrictions and deportations, and migrants report scarce jobs, healthcare and schools. Caravans are common, but many in this group saw new hope after last week's elections, in which Democrats won control of Congress.

Some migrants said they had been victims of kidnapping or other crimes in Mexico and wanted a chance to seek asylum in the United States. Billy Noe Martinez, a Honduran who survived the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas, asked Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to let the group move forward and said he cannot return home because people there are looking for him.

What happens next

Analysts said any change in US policy is unlikely to come quickly. "As long as Trump remains president, the deportations will not stop," said Ivan Porraz, a researcher at the College of the Southern Border (Ecosur), who also warned that human smugglers could exploit the migrants. For now the caravan is still in southern Mexico, weeks of walking from Mexico City and far from the US border.