Sure enough, caravan migrants turn on their organizers

By: Monica Showalter
The American Thinker
December 24, 2018

It had to happen.  As we suspected would happen.

The caravan migrants, still cooling their heels out of sight of tourists in an isolated redoubt of Tijuana, in line awaiting for their U.S. asylum claims to be adjudicated, have finally turned on their rabidly left-wing organizers – namely, Pueblo Sin Fronteras.

The Associated Press has a pretty good report about the scope of the migrant disgust:

Thousands are now in Tijuana on the U.S. border, where they are likely to be camped for months or longer with no easy way to get into the United States, creating what is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in this overwhelmed city.

Many blame Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, made up of about 40 U.S. and Mexican activists.

Critics, including former allies and some of the migrants themselves, say Pueblo Sin Fronteras downplayed the dangers of such treks, especially for families and small children, and misled the participants about how long they would have to wait on the Mexican side to apply for asylum.

They were Chavistas, and as Chavistas, they were offering up the big goody-style free-stuff packages, except that they wanted Uncle Sam, not Hugo’s oil money, to pay for them.  When that fell through and the migrants ran into a U.S. president with a serious interest in border laws meaning what they say they mean, they got left high and dry, as stiffed on the promises as Venezuela’s fleeing refugees are.  The goody pot never materialized, though it might for some of them as they wait their turns in line.  With 90% of the migrant caravan composed of military- and gang-aged young men, don’t hold your breath.

What’s more, the migrants are not only angry at the Pueblo Sin Fronteras for its false promises of easy entry at the U.S. border, encouraging that (and the AP does not let them off the hook, either: it clearly pins the sponsorship role this group played), but they are also angry that the mysteriously funded NGO apparently discouraged them from taking Mexico up on its generous offer of school, jobs, and legal status in Mexico’s near-to-home southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, where labor shortages abound and jobs are there to be filled, all in a similar culture to Central America’s nations.  Migrants could get a leg up pretty quickly with neither enhanced education nor a language change necessary in those places, and crime is not bad there, either by Mexican state comparisons or, especially, as compared to the rest of Central America.  The Mexican government’s offer really was generous, and according to the AP, they seem to have run up against an expiration date, courtesy of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, whose project really has been political.

We know that the migrants have turned on the organizers because suddenly, they are nowhere to be found in Tijuana.  Some are still talking for the cameras, but the Tijuana mayor says he wants them behind bars for their negligent stunt (which has cost Tijuana a lot of money). Pueblo Sin Fronteras itself says it no longer wants to sponsor any more caravans.  Good riddance.  But, not to celebrate or anything, they say they will pursue their open-borders agenda by other means, which will probably be left-wing lawyers in the States.

The fact remains that their name negatively resonates among the migrant community, and word among that group has a way of getting around.  The reverberations should be strong for that, while questions are more than necessary here about who funds them – that’s a question that shouldn’t go away.  For now, nice to see at least some of their caravan pawns and moms-and-kids getting angry.  Frankly, after that particular stunt, they have a right to be.

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