As the sun rises over the Usumacinta River between Guatemala and Mexico, the silence is broken by the sounds of people awaking after another night camping on the riverbanks.
Soon the ferrymen who pilot a flotilla of makeshift rafts constructed of planks strapped to very large inner tyre tubes, begin their never-ending trade of moving fruit and vegetables, construction equipment, crates of beer and liquor, motorcycles and bicycles, but above all – people.
This is where thousands of migrants heading to the United States begin what they hope to be the last leg of their often epic journeys to the northern border with the US.
1600 miles through Mexico is all that separates them from their dreams of a new life.
I’ve been here many times to report over many years and I am never less than amazed at the number of people who attempt this journey, and the sheer number of small children.
But this time I’ve noticed some things have changed.
Whereas a few years ago the migrants were almost entirely from Southern and Central America, now they’re from all over the world.
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On this trip we have met young men and women from China, Egypt, Jordan, Somalia, Mauritania, Kazakhstan, Haiti, and Gambia, to name a few.
Another major change seems to be the attitude of the Mexican authorities.
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In the past, the passage of the migrants north, while not easy, wasn’t noticeably hindered by the Mexicans.
Now though, with the issue of migration on its southern border a political hot potato in a United States election year, the Mexican authorities have got the message from the United States that thousands of migrants on the border fence is not a good look.
What we have witnessed is a system that doesn’t actually stop the migrants moving north, but makes it bureaucratic, confusing and often contradictory enough that the migrants don’t know what to do.
The US has a problem with the numbers, so people travelling through Mexico are shifted from one location to another and left, and then shifted again – never really making any progress.
Legally, migrants and asylum seekers cannot be stopped, but they can be asked to follow rules (or have their paperwork torn up), and if the rules keep changing, there is nothing they can do about.
After crossing the Usumacinta River from Guatemala, the migrants rest in the city of Hidalgo, before forming into groups known as “caravans” to begin their journey north.
They travel together for safety from gangs and criminals who prey on the migrants.
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Migrants worldwide head to the US through Mexico
We joined a pop-up caravan shortly before dawn; they move at that time to take advantage of the cooler temperatures.
This caravan is led by a young Brazilian man named Davyde who is with his wife and sister-in-law.
“Brazil is not good, I can’t make enough money to pay the rent, America would be great,” he told me when I wondered why he’d made the journey from Brazil.
As we walk with the group of 200 plus people, the sun rises and the temperature soars.
Whole families, very young and old, travel along the sides of busy motorways, heading north – always north.
Walking with the group, we meet Mayra Ferrerr from Acarigua in Venezuela.
The 40-year-old is travelling with her two sons and some fellow Venezuelans.
They’ve all become friends along the way. Mayra has breast cancer, and she’s trying to get to her family in the US.
“We left Venezuela because there is no education, because there is no medicine, because I am an oncology patient and I cannot get treatment in the public health system for breast cancer,” she told me.
“And well, I needed to go somewhere where I can be checked and continue treatment.”
Mayra explained that she’s doing chemotherapy in the form of pills, but that she stopped taking them so that she wasn’t too weak on this journey.
She says it’s tough, but that she and her family and friends plan to keep going.
“Well, it is hard because unfortunately in many towns we have crossed, they take advantage of our situation, our need to keep moving forward, and the costs, be it water or bread, they make it more expensive for us.”
Most of the migrants are carrying tents, an absolute necessity for crossing the Darien Gap – a notorious jungle crossing on the migrant route, which lies between Colombia and Panama.
Mayra says the tents are worth holding on to.
“We have kept our tents because we have nowhere to stay, and we have to set up the tent and camp anywhere, so that we can keep moving forward.”
After a few hours of walking the migrants approach an immigration checkpoint where they are met by Mexican immigration officers.
We keep filming as they are told they will be taken north to the first major city in southern Mexico called Tapachula.
The immigration officials give the migrants water and assure them that they are allowed to continue their journey north, that the involvement of immigration is simply to offer them a ride to Tapachula and a free meal.
The migrants are sceptical, but over and over they are assured that once they are in Tapachula they can get paperwork done and continue.
The ones who agree have their identity cards and passports logged and checked, and then they’re loaded onto minibuses.
Mayra, her two sons, and her friends all agree to go in the migration minibus to Tapachula.
This doesn’t mean however that a journey further north is going to happen anytime soon.
At another immigration checkpoint on the outskirts of Tapachula, crowds surge around immigration staff, waving their papers.
All they’re trying to do is get on a bus north, but the Mexican authorities assumed assistance has dried up.
America does not want them in the north and nor it seems does Mexico, so they’re in a limbo.
At multiple checkpoints we saw what is developing into a multinational mess.
Groups of young Chinese men and women take shade amongst Jordanians, Egyptians, Somalis, Gambians, even two friends from Kazakhstan.
The list of nationalities is remarkable, not least because of the distances they’ve travelled.
Said is a 28-year-old Afghan who worked for a British NGO until the Taliban arrived in Kabul in August 2021.
He says he got his paperwork to leave from Kabul Airport at the time, but abandoned his plans after a suicide bomb went off at the evacuation point.
Said’s father and two uncles were killed by the Taliban, and he sees no safe future for his family there.
Indeed, he asked us not to show his face or use his full name because it would be dangerous for family members still in Afghanistan.
Said is travelling with his wife, three young children, and his 74-year-old grandfather who has stage one Alzheimer’s.
Said told me that other migrants have nicknamed his grandad the “warrior” for undertaking such an intense physical journey in his older years.
The family has been on the move for two years.
“I realised I am on my own, I have to do it for myself, for my family, I’ve realised nobody is going to help me,” he told me.
Said knows the political mood in the United States ahead of the presidential elections in November will be a factor in their chances of making it.
“I believe in God, I know I am in Mexico and 90% of the people are arriving there, actually, before the election, I need to get there before the election because I don’t know the next president, what he will do and what he is thinking about refugees like us,” he said.
Amongst the migrants we also come across 14-year-old Edgar Fonseca Cepeda.
He is completely on his own; an unaccompanied minor migrant.
Edgar travelled from Venezuela to Colombia where his grandmother, who had been caring for him, died.
Now he is trying to get to his mother who is in Washington DC and has undertaken this journey on his own.
We arrange for him to speak to his mother Carolina on a video call.
It was heartbreaking to witness.
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14-year-old migrant travels alone to reach his mother in US
Both mum and son started crying, and his mum kept saying how sorry she was that he was having to do this journey alone.
The day before, Edgar had explained to her that he, along with another group of migrants, had been kidnapped by a gang – he was only released after handing over 75 US dollars scrambled together by fellow travellers.
“We decided to come here on foot, which is a risk, and well, before Tapachula, just before we got here, we had already walked about six kilometres, we were stopped by a few bikers,” he explained to me.
“That’s when they told us not to cry, not to scream because nothing was going to happen to us, we thought that we were going to be surrounded by immigration, but no, they took us to a chicken coop…”
The group, including Edgar, say they were held for 8 to 10 hours.
We’ve heard exactly the same testimony from a number of migrants we’ve spoken to in the last few days.
“The truth is, it was horrible that chicken coop, people holding guns, I’m not used to seeing things like that, it was really scary,” Edgar added.
We spoke to his mum Carolina, and she asked us to take him to the authorities, saying it was too dangerous for him to continue alone.
Edgar says he hasn’t seen his mother for six or seven months.
“It’s really very, very hard, I miss her so much, that’s why I’ve done all of this.”
Edgar bade an emotional goodbye to his new travelling family, the strangers who helped look after him on the journey.
He is safe now but when he will see his mother again nobody can say.
All these migrants are in a sort of vortex – not being stopped from travelling north but not being allowed to either.
The day after meeting Mayra and her group of family and friends heading north, we travelled again south to the river.
On our way back we recognised some of Mayra’s group on the side of the road, exactly where they originally started.
We were confused, so we pulled over to talk to them.
They explained they were taken north to Tapachula, given some food, waited about an hour not knowing what was happening, then put back on the minibus and sent straight back to the riverside where they started.
They told us they were given additional paperwork, and then, as they put it “thrown out on the street”.
I asked one of them, Christian Heredia, if the authorities acknowledged that taking them all the way back doesn’t help.
“They’re delaying us, yes, they know, of course, but as I was saying, they are the law here, here we are nobody, so they do as they please with the migrants. Right? That’s the truth,” he replied.
Christian says many of the migrants we had seen loaded into the minibuses and promised a ride to Tapachula the previous day had been pushed back to the river just like them.
They suspect the authorities only promised to look after them because of our presence, otherwise they believe the migration officials probably would’ve just driven them straight back down to the river.
Local buses don’t usually pick up migrants because they’re not allowed to, but standing on the side of the road with fresh papers, Christian and the group were able to flag down a minibus to take them back to Tapachula.
They reunited with Mayra and her boys in the main square where migrants from all over the world gather.
They, like everyone there, refuse to accept defeat. But their mammoth journeys are far from over.
Indeed, their difficulties continue.
The last we heard from Mayra and her friends they’d been robbed at gunpoint in a bus taking them further north.
The Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut came as the Lebanese caretaker government was having an emergency meeting to discuss the previous two days of pager and radio explosions.
It caused yet more shock in a nation which considers itself battle-hardened after years of strife, disaster and wars.
But Lebanon has been truly rocked to its core by the string of attacks over the past few days.
“These are war crimes,” one Lebanese minister told us.
He’s been on the US most wanted list for more than forty years after being accused of being involved in the bombing of the US embassy and US marine barracks in 1983 which killed hundreds.
But the Hezbollahstronghold of Dahieh is a heavily populated crowded residential area and packed with shops, markets, and high-rise apartments.
The strike appeared to have flattened an entire block, flipping cars and leaving other vehicles covered in a heavy blanket of thick dust and rubble.
Several people could be seen in video footage filmed by neighbours, trapped under piles of rubble.
The Lebanese health authority keeps on updating the number of people killed in the strike, with the latest figures reaching 14.
There are more than 60 injured, with some of those believed to be in critical condition. Children are said to be among the dead, missing and injured.
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Aftermath of IDF strike on Lebanon
‘Our actions speak for themselves’
The Israeli military immediately claimed success – saying that, along with Aqil, the strike had wiped out about 10 of his elite Radwan Force.
According to an IDF spokesman, who did not provide any evidence, Aqil’s team had been planning an attack into northern Israel similar to the Hamas attack on 7 October.
Both the prime minister and defence minister have vowed to restore security to the north of Israel so the 60,000 residents who have fled the cross-border attacks can return to their homes.
An estimated 120,000 Lebanese have also been forced out of their homes along the border.
The airstrike in the capital is the second in Beirut in two months – both, according to the IDF, targeted at senior Hezbollah commanders.
According to sources being quoted in Lebanese media, the Hezbollah group of senior leaders was meeting in an underground basement of a large housing block when the missile penetrated.
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It is unlikely to be seen as a justifiable precision attack – or a “targeted strike”, as described by the Israeli military – if the Lebanese government ministers’ reactions are anything to go by.
We spoke to several as they arrived for their emergency cabinet meeting in the hour before the attack.
They were already incensed by the back-to-back coordinated booby trap explosions of communication devices across the country. Israel has yet to confirm or deny its involvement in the blasts.
Speaking about the pager and radio explosions across Lebanon earlier this week, the country’s environment minister and head of its disaster management committee Nasser Yassin said: “It’s genocidal, it’s indiscriminate and a violation of international humanitarian law and every other law.
“We have an insane leadership on the southern end of our borders who don’t want to be indicted by the International Court of Justice.”
The information minister Ziad Makary called the explosions of communication devices “a new crime… it’s a war crime and not something that would pass easily trying to kill three thousand or four thousand civilians as we see them”.
And Amin Salam, the economy minister, warned: “Things are escalating by the minute.
“There’s more tension, more provocation. We have been doing our best to get to a peaceful solution but the escalation is unprecedented.
“It’s an act of terror, regardless of who was targeted.”
Most intense border fighting in nearly a year
The airstrike in Beirut came after a marked increase in cross-border exchanges – the most intense in nearly a year.
The Israeli military said Hezbollah had spent the early part of the day firing nearly 200 rockets across the border into Israel.
Many of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.
This followed the Israeli bombing of more than 50 targets in the south of Lebanon overnight – which the IDF said hit launchers and weapons stores.
The Israeli military is suffering losses too – there were two funerals today for Israeli soldiers killed on their northern border – but it’s Hezbollah which seems to be paying a far heavier price right now.
Hezbollah unilaterally entered this latest war on 8 October, much to the frustration of Lebanon’s caretaker government, and a day after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
Hezbollah have repeatedly said their actions are in support of Gaza and have continued to insist they will only stop once there’s a ceasefire.
But right now, the fighting group allied to Iran – and designated a terror group by the US and UK – appears to be very much on the backfoot after three attacks in four days.
Meanwhile, Israel is ploughing on despite the cries of indignation and condemnation from the international community.
Additional reporting from Beirut with camera Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Lebanon producers Jihad Jineid and Sami Zein.
Even after exploding pagers, thousands of casualties and the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in an Israeli airstrike, the UK and other allies are still hoping that all-out war between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon can be avoided.
But events are unfolding at a dizzying pace – far faster than governments can react – and each new attack raises the chance of escalation into wider, regional confrontation.
A big unknown is how Iran will respond.
Hezbollah is regarded as its most powerful proxy – and Tehran directly suffered from the pager bombs with its own ambassador to Lebanon being injured.
Adding to the pressure, the Iranian regime has yet to carry out any major retaliation for the killing by Israel of a top Hamas leader – Ismail Haniyeh – in Tehran in July.
Tehran will not want to fall short a second time – or else risk looking weak.
Doing nothing is also not an option.
The same is true for Hezbollah.
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Hezbollah: ‘Enemy crossed all red lines’
But a calculation by Western allies when considering the timing and scope for Hezbollah’s next move appears to be that the group’s ability to retaliate in any meaningful way for the damage it has suffered is in disarray, following the targeting of thousands of its fighters’ pagers and walkie-talkies.
Israel is accused of turning the devices into remotely detonated bombs in an unprecedented attack on Tuesday and Wednesday that left dozens of people dead and thousands wounded across Lebanon, including an undisclosed number of Hezbollah members. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
The blasts also devastated the group’s communication channels making it much harder to muster a speedy response – though Hassan Nasrallah, the leader, has vowed retribution.
A second factor behind the West’s hope for calm heads is a belief that neither Israel nor Hezbollah nor Iran want a full-blown war.
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Lebanon minister: ‘Israel has committed war crimes’
Israel does not yet appear to have the scale of troops on its northern border that would be needed for a large-scale ground offensive – though a ground attack is only one option.
Only striking from the air is another.
On Thursday, Israel Defence Forces launched their most intense barrage of airstrikes into southern Lebanon since the start of this latest round of hostilities almost a year ago.
The Israeli government has said it wants to enable tens of thousands of its citizens to return to their homes close to the border with Lebanon in the north from where they were forced to flee in the wake of increased Hezbollah rocket attacks.
At the same time, Nasrallah has promised to prevent this from happening, which puts the two sides on a direct collision course.
It means the risk of escalation remains high.
Against such uncertainty, David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, chaired a meeting of the government’s emergency COBRA committee on Friday.
He discussed the crisis and the UK’s ability to deal with what would be a hugely complex and risky evacuation operation of British nationals from Lebanon should the situation deteriorate significantly.
The previous evening, he had called for an immediate ceasefire by both sides following a meeting in Paris with his American, French, German and Italian counterparts.
But less than 24 hours later, Israel said it had killed Ibrahim Aqil, one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders, in a strike on a southern suburb of Beirut – another significant blow to the group and yet one more reason for Hezbollah and Iran to want to retaliate.
A Lebanese government minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes “in a blatant way and without immediate condemnation”, in an interview with Sky News.
Walid Fayad, the country’s energy minister, also said Lebanon was “losing faith” in the UN and international laws.
He called this week’s pager attacks a move “from targeted terror to distributed and blind terror”.
Communication devices used by Hezbollah members, such as pagers and walkie-talkies, exploded on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people and injuring thousands.
The blasts increased fears of an all-out war in the Middle East.
Lebanon and Hezbollah say Israel was behind the pager attacks. Israel has neither denied nor confirmed its involvement.
“What I am shocked not to see is an immediate, overwhelming condemnation by all countries of the world,” Mr Fayad told The World With Yalda Hakim.
“What we have seen in front of our own eyes is civilian people in the supermarkets or going about their business in the city of Beirut and anywhere else in Lebanon dying or getting injured.”
Mr Fayad added: “This attack was perpetrated deliberately in a clear contradiction with and disobedience to all humanitarian international laws or UN resolutions with respect to Israel and Lebanon. What we are seeing is very alarming because the world is silent on a very large scale.”
He said Lebanon is losing faith “with the international laws, with the ability of the UN to enforce any law and order at world scale and at regional scale”.
He continued: “We would be certainly asking for the implementation of UN resolutions and for the implementation of the latest security council decision asking Israel to stop its attacks on the Palestinians and on the Lebanese.”
Reflecting on the approaching anniversary of the 7 October attackon Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages, Mr Fayad said: “We are looking at one year of useless conflict where Israel is not making any accomplishments with these conflicts other than total destruction for the Palestinian people and not only the people themselves, but also the infrastructure.”
Since Israel’s military response began last October, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between fighters and civilians.
A population of more than 2.3 million people has also been displaced by the conflict in Gaza.
Mr Fayad also criticised President Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, saying that “sometimes they can be driven by national priorities”.
He said: “You have a situation in the US where it’s currently the election race time, and there are lobbies that are very strong in the US and where any change in the establishment’s policy or stance might have a bearing.”
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Mr Fayad urged world leaders to prevent “escalation into a much broader conflict” on the Israel-Lebanon border.
“World leaders happen to have a lot of leverage whether in the supply of ammunition or in the supply of financial support to the state of Israel,” he added.
“It is in their hands to use this leverage to put a stop to these atrocities and to start going in the right direction, a direction that allows… peace and stability in the region rather than complete chaos and risking everybody’s lives and escalation into a much broader conflict.”
Despite the minister’s calls for de-escalation, Israel said it hit Beirut in a “targeted” strike on Friday afternoon after Hezbollah fired 140 rockets into Israel.