And it begins: Thousands of migrants rush towards the U.S. border on election day

EAGLE PASS, TX - The New York Post reported that a new caravan with nearly 3,000 migrants is heading north to the United States southern border in what US Border Patrol officials are calling a "mad dash" to illegally cross the border while Joe Biden is still in office.

The caravan was reportedly seen heading out of Tapachual, which is 50 miles from the Guatemalan border in southern Mexico, on Tuesday, November 5th, Election Day. Photos show countless men, women, and children who are taking part in the 2,000-mile journey to the United States. A U.S. Border Patrol source told The Post that the agency was well aware that the elections would trigger a new wave of mass migration. 

The source told The Post, "If Trump wins, they are gonna try to get here before he's in office. It's one last (expletive) to America."

Another source said, "We knew that was coming because they want to get in before 'orange bad man' wins." According to an estimate by the House Committee on Homeland Security, more than 10 million migrants will have been caught crossing the border illegally by the time Biden leaves office in January 2025.

The administration saw its biggest surge in 2023 after the Trump-era Title 42 ended, with more than one million people rushing to the border to try to enter within a span of just a few months. At the time of the release of the article, it was unclear whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would win the election.

Many migrants feared that if Trump gets back in office on January 20, 2025, he would bring a complete stop to America's asylum program, giving many migrants an incentive to get across the border before that. As of this writing, former President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

Trump made illegal immigration one of the biggest platforms of his campaign, vowing to make the border his first priority and deport millions of illegal immigrants when he returns to the White House. Members of the latest caravan said that they were worried about the trip, finding some comfort in the masses that provide safety from Mexico's cartels.

Honduran migrant Roy Murillo said, "We want US authorities to see us, to see that we are people who want to work, not to harm anyone." Murillo was traveling with his pregnant wife and two kids. He said, "Here, the cartels either kidnap you or kill you." The caravan's trip comes a few weeks after another group of about 2,000 migrants left Tapachula for the United States.

One Border Patrol source said, "[They] will make it. They always do." On the other side of the southern border in Eagle Pass, Texas, it was business as usual as border agents continued to deal with a stream of migrants illegally crossing the border. Early morning on Tuesday, November 5th, a group of nine migrants entered the country, guided by coyotes who waded them across the Rio Grande using an inner tube.

The group, which consisted of migrant families and two unaccompanied children from Central and South America, walked through the strong rapids and islands onto U.S. soil, where they were eventually picked up by Border Patrol agents in a neighborhood full of multi-million-dollar homes. 

Multiple Border Patrol sources told The Post that Eagle Pass has seen a surge of mass illegal immigrant border crossings ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with more than 300 migrants turning themselves in to border agents each day in Maverick County.

While overall encounters over the southern border continue to decrease, with the Border Patrol catching 54,000 migrants in September, a 7.2 percent drop from August, the Biden administration has overseen some of the highest peaks of migration in recent U.S history.