A caravan of around 1,200 Central American migrants bound for the United States, entered southern Mexico on Wednesday, even as President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs if it fails to slow illegal immigration.
Authorities did not deter the large group of undocumented migrants who crossed the bridge over the Suchiate river, which forms the border between Guatemala and Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.
A municipal police patrol monitored the migrants who were mostly from Honduras but did not stop them as they began walking along the side of the road in the southern state of Chiapas toward the city of Tapachula.
Mexico has deployed its new National Guard police force to the southern border and stepped up detentions and deportations in a bid to slow the flow of migrants crossing its territory toward the United States.
But migrant detentions at the US-Mexican border still increased by 32 per cent month-on-month in May, to more than 144,000, according to US Customs and Border Protection.
That has provoked the wrath of the US president, who threatened last week to apply tariffs of five per cent on all Mexican exports starting Monday, and rising incrementally to 25 per cent by October.