As members of that disorganized 'Migrant Caravan' traded rocks and tear gas with Border Patrol agents south of San Diego on Tuesday, another convoy, said to be far larger than the one that has been stalled in Tijuana for two months, is setting off from Central America, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
But Guadalupe Correa, an expect on Latin American migration at the Wilson Center, who is in Mexico studying the caravans, tells News Radio 1200 WOAI that the destination of this caravan is not the United States, at least not right away.
"This is probably the first time that the migrants are going directly to Mexico," she said. "And they are heading to one of the poorest states in Mexico.
Correa says the members of the caravan, said to number about 5,000, are natives of all three nations in the infamous 'Northern Triangle' of Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and their destination, at least for now, is Chiapas state in southern Mexico.
Correa says members of the new convoy tell her they have been promised jobs by new Mexico President Lopez Obrador building a major rail link connecting historically rural and disconnected southern Mexico with the rest of the country, and they plan to stop there to do that work, which is not available in their home countries.
She says she'll believe it when she sees it.
"These people are in this caravan heading to Mexico, where there is supposedly going to be a rail project which will provide them with jobs," she told News Radio 1200 WOAI's Michael Board from Mexico City.
But, analysts say that given the opportunity, all of the people in the new caravan, like those who have been encamped in Tijuana for two months, would prefer to enter the United States.
IMAGE: GETTY