A group of Central American migrants arrived at the U.S. consulate in Tijuana, Mexico on Tuesday and demanded that the Trump administration expedite their asylum claims immediately or pay them $50,000 each to return to their home countries, the San Diego Tribune reported Tuesday.
The migrants, who arrived in Tijuana one month ago as part of a massive caravan of more than 6,000 people, also demanded an end to deportations.
When asked how the group of roughly 100 migrants decided to demand $50,000 per person, organizer Alfonso Guerrero Ulloa of Honduras, told the Tribune that they settled on that figure collectively.
“It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa said. “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.”
The group, which gave the consulate 72 hours to consider their offer, had not decided how to retaliate should their demands be ignored.
“I don’t know, we will decide as a group,” Ulloa said.
A second group of roughly 50 migrants delivered a letter to the consulate on Tuesday asking officials to allow 300 migrants through the San Ysidro port of entry each day — a number that far outpaces the 40 to 100 migrants currently admitted daily.
“In the meantime, families, women and children who have fled our countries continue to suffer and the civil society of Tijuana continue to be forces to confront this humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis caused in great part by decades of U.S. intervention in Central America,” read the letter, which was addressed to President Trump, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, San Ysidro Port Director Sidney Aki, and Commissioner of the Office of Customs and Border Protection Kevin McAleenan.