Mexico's interior ministry Thursday said hundreds of mostly Honduran migrants will be blocked from entering the United States, reports BBC.
A group of more than 2,000 migrants from Honduras started walking and hitching rides toward Guatemala in a bid to form the kind of migrant caravan that reached the U.S. border in 2018 – Guatemala's National Migration Institute said in a statement that at least 2,274 people had entered the country.
The move comes as President Donald Trump continues to put pressure on Mexico to shift the burden of dealing with asylum seekers on to them.
"The government of Mexico is very open to being a country of asylum and to migrants who want to stay and work, to obtain resident status, a job, and those who seek to join a social program that we generally provide to Mexicans, are welcome," said Mexico's Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero, who warned the migrants would be met by special operations and immigration agents.
"Those who only want to use Mexico as a transit country are not welcome."
Cordero also warned, any migrants who do not choose to stay in Mexico will be returned to their home countries.