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More than 7,000 Hondurans have returned home after abandoning migrant caravan

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EFE

More than 7,000 Hondurans have voluntarily returned home after abandoning the US-bound migrant caravan, official sources said Wednesday.

According to a report from the Honduran National Migration Institute, 7,013 migrants who were part of the Central American caravan have returned to Honduras, including 3,933 adults.

The remaining 3,080 are minors, including 504 who were travelling alone, the report says.

According to the report, 79.3 percent of the migrants, or 5,559 people, returned to Honduras on buses from Mexico and Guatemala, while 20.7 percent returned by plane from those two countries.

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Honduran authorities said they have been providing returning migrants with food, medical checkups and transportation back to their home communities.

The first migrant caravan left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Oct. 13 and entered Mexico on Oct. 19.

The caravan’s main contingent is making its way through northwestern Mexico, though it is still 2,000km (1,200mi) from the border city of Tijuana, where hundreds of migrants have already gathered.

Roughly 350 migrants who are not part of the caravan arrived in Tijuana on Wednesday, joining other groups that arrived in the border town in recent days, including around one hundred LGBT people.

A score of migrants even dared to climb the border fence on Tuesday, under the watchful eye of the US Border Patrol, while Tijuana residents met with officials from the municipal police to express their concern regarding the arrival of the Central Americans.

On the US side, border security has been tightened, some access points at the official ports of entry connecting Tijuana and San Diego were closed, and soldiers were deployed to the area.

The soldiers are part of the 5,600 troops that President Donald Trump deployed to Texas, Arizona and California to support immigration authorities ahead of the arrival of the migrant caravans.

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