The march of the migrants poses a dilemma for the US

Trump has hinted that Democrats may have been secretly funding the ‘caravan’ of more than 7,000 Honduran immigrants trooping towards the United States. I don’t think so. In the lead-up to the midterms, if any party would sponsor by far the largest organised mass migration to the US on record, Republicans would.

For politically, the spectacle is a gift. Thousands of clamorous would-be asylum seekers crammed onto a bridge with no toilets, stampeding, breaking into fights, demanding to cross the Mexican border, the better to gatecrash the US: it was a premier photo op for anti-immigration Republicans. Trump has threatened to close the American border and bring in the military. Nevertheless, most of the Hondurans leapt from the bridge to swim or be ferried to the Mexican side of the Suchiate River, and are now streaming toward their last hurdle, protected by Mexican federal police. It’s El Norte or bust.

Honduran migrants rest during their journey, in Huixtla, Chiapas state, Mexico (Photo: Getty)

The image of that multitude on the move, full of women clutching screaming babies while vowing never to return to a homeland grown intolerable, isn’t just a snapshot of the present, but a vision of the future.