by Art Moore
Citing his team’s reporting from Guatemala, respected Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Tuesday there’s evidence that the migrant “caravan” headed to the United States is comprised mostly of military-aged males and was financed by Americans.
Fitton, in a tweet, said he wants President Trump to launch a criminal investigation.
Investigative reporter Sara Carter, who is in Guatemala, agreed, saying she found it’s mostly men crossing the Guatemalan border, and they are giving a rehearsed answer: “This is not politics – this is about poverty.”
“There were women and children but they were at the front of the caravan (smaller numbers). None would say who the organizers are but several said it was organized,” she tweeted Tuesday.
Carter, noted the Gateway Pundit, met with the Guatemalan Minister of Defense on Tuesday.
“Based on the interviews I’ve conducted so far – along with Judicial Watch investigations – the U.S. needs to investigate the funding that was used by NGOs, as well as other groups to organize the caravans,” Carter wrote.
Judicial Watch said Tuesday that besides “gang members and mobs of young angry men,” the caravan also consists of Africans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians.
Judicial Watch said its team embedded with the caravan has observed that “the popular mainstream media narrative of desperate migrants – many of them women and children – seeking a better life is “hardly accurate.”
Migrants in the caravan have said their intent is to seek political asylum in the United States. Asylum seekers are required to demonstrate they have a reasonable fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, national origin, political opinion or membership in a social group.
Guatemalan intelligence officials, according to Judicial Watch, confirmed that the caravan that originated in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula includes Special Interest Aliens, or SIA, from other continents as well as other criminal elements and gang members.
“There are also large groups of men, some with criminal histories, aggressively demanding that the U.S. take them in,” Judicial Watch said.
‘We’re coming Trump’
The organization said that during a visit to the Guatemalan town of Chiquimula, about 35 miles from the Honduran border, its team encountered a “rowdy group” of about 600 men, ages 17 to about 40, marching north on a narrow two-lane highway.
Among them was a 40-year-old Honduran man who previously lived in the United States for decades and was deported. Another man in his 30s contradicted media reports that caravan participants are fleeing violence and fear for their life.
“We’re not scared,” he said waving his index finger as others around him nodded in agreement. “We’re going to the United States to get jobs.”
Others chanted “vamos para allá Trump!” – “We’re coming Trump” – as they clenched their fists in the air.
“We need money and food,” said a 29-year-old man who made the trek with his 21-year-old brother.
Judicial Watch said that all of the migrants it interviewed repeated the same rehearsed line when asked who organized the caravan.
They insisted it was a spontaneous event, Judicial Watch said, “even though there were clearly organizers shouting instructions in Spanish and putting select persons in front of cameras for interviews.”
A few claimed they heard about it on local news in Honduras. All said the caravan was not about politics but rather poverty.
“I just want to get back to the U.S.,” said a 32-year-old man who admitted he has been deported from the U.S. twice. “We are all just looking for work.”
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a conservative, said the left is seeking to destabilize his country by manipulating migrants.
Women and children are being used without regard to the risks to their lives, the president said.
“The irregular mobilization was organized for political reasons to negatively affect the governance and image of Honduras and to destabilize the peace of neighboring countries,” Hernández said.
He said many who joined the caravan have returned to Honduras after realizing they had been fooled.
Guatemalan officials said 1,700 migrants have been returned to Honduras on buses. Government sources said first wave of migrants totaled about 4,000. A second, less organized, group of about 2,000 then set out for the U.S.
Guatemalan Secretary of Strategic Intelligence Mario Duarte said his country needs help to stop the human caravans.
“There are only so many resources we can dedicate to this.”
He said Guatemalans are getting robbed and crimes are being committed by the people in the caravan.
