Mexico dispatches two Boeing 727s full of federal police officers to intercept migrant caravan from Honduras heading to the US that has defied Trump's warnings and continues to grow

By Keith Griffith
For Dailymail.com and Afp
Published: 00:41 EDT, 18 October 2018
Updated: 10:26 EDT, 18 October 2018

Mexico has dispatched two Boeing 727s full of federal police officers to its southern border, as the country prepares for the arrival of a migrant caravan of thousands from Central America.

Five hundred federal police officers in riot gear arrived on Wednesday in Tapachula, Chiapas on the border with Guatemala, where some 4,000 migrants are now marching northward.

The presence of federal forces on the southern border of the country is not to stop migrants from crossing the border, but to help immigration officials maintain order, Mexican Federal Police Commissioner Manelich Castilla Craviotto told Noticeros Televisia.

'The INM reiterates its unrestricted commitment to respect the human rights of migrants,' said Mexico's National Institute of Migration, a government agency that controls and supervises immigration.

U.S. President Donald Trump warned Thursday that he will use military force to seal the U.S-Mexico border unless Mexico intervenes.

'I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught – and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!' Trump wrote on Twitter.