Some migrant caravan members demanding reparations to turn around: report

Two groups of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. on Tuesday marched toward the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, where one group has asked to be granted asylum or be paid $50,000 each in reparations to turn around, according to a report in The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The first group of about 100 migrants arrived at the consulate on Tuesday morning, and members said they were asking the Trump administration for $50,000 to go away.

{mosads}“It may seem like a lot of money to you. But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras,” organizer Alfonso Guerrero Ulloa said to the Union-Tribune of the reparations request.

The group gave the U.S. Consulate 72 hours to respond to their demand.

Another group of migrants delivered a letter to the Consulate later in the day, asking the U.S. to more quickly process requests for asylum. According to the Union-Tribune, the migrant group asked the U.S. to grant asylum to 300 people each day at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

U.S. officials currently admit between 40 and 100 asylum-seekers each day, according to the newspaper. 

The group of about 50 migrants wrote in their letter that this process violates U.S. and international laws that require a faster process for asylum requests.

“In the meantime, families, women and children who have fled our countries continue to suffer and the civil society of Tijuana continue to be forces to confront this humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis caused in great part by decades of U.S. intervention in Central America,” the letter reads, according to the Union-Tribune.

The migrants have made their way in recent months from Central America through Mexico and toward the southern U.S. border. The migrants say they are fleeing violence in their home countries in Central America.

President Trump, however, has claimed that many of the migrants are criminals and has threatened to close off the southern border. His administration has also moved recently to restrict the ability for certain migrants to seek asylum, though that policy faces legal challenges.