MEXICO, Nov 6 — A caravan of at least hundreds of migrants left from the southern Mexican city of Tapachula yesterday, heading for the US southern border.

The smaller caravan plans to join a larger one that left six days ago and is currently stopped about 40km north in the town of Huixtla.

Organisers said the first had swelled to some 7,000 people while the government in the southern Chiapas state said it estimated the group at 3,500 people.

Many migrants are fleeing poverty and political instability in their homelands, hailing from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and especially Honduras and Venezuela, according to a Reuters witness.

"I think 3.4 months is too long to wait to get a humanitarian visa, to be able to travel through Mexican territory,” said Selma Alvarez from Venezuela. "Because we are at the mercy of coyotes, of criminals, it is good that we accompany each other in the caravan, it seems safer to me.”

Alvarez added that the group was impatient to get to the US border and start the process to enter the US with appointments secured via a US government app, CBP One, and request asylum. US President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election next year, is under pressure to lower the number of people crossing illegally into the US from Mexico.

A record number of people this year have crossed the Darien Gap region connecting Panama and Colombia. — Reuters