The migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border has swelled to more than 7,000 people in the past 24 hours, about double the initial reports of 3,500.
The caravan, reportedly comprised of migrants from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela, left southern Mexico on Monday bound for the U.S. It comes at a time President Joe Biden is facing increasing pressure about his open-border policies and the rising number of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S.
Officials in the Mexican state of Chiapas estimated 3,500 people set off on foot from the city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border and about 1,100 miles to the southern-most tip of the U.S. border, the New York Post reported Wednesday.
But Irineo Mujica, a U.S. citizen and one of the caravan's organizers, said 5,000 were in the initial group, and the number had since grown to more than 7,000, the Daily Mail reported.
The caravan on Tuesday was resting in the municipality of Huehuetan, about 16 miles from Tapachula, the Daily Mail reported. On Wednesday, the caravan was set to reach the town of Huixtla, about 13 miles to the north, Mujica said.
Mujica told cable network Real America's Voice he believed the leaders of Latin American countries were conspiring to create an immigration crisis to extract money from the U.S. — and that President Joe Biden has allowed it to happen, the Post reported.
"I believe the Biden administration has dropped the ball," he said. "A lot of the countries are fueling this immigration by … transporting people in."
Mujica accused Biden of failing to reach an agreement with his counterparts in Latin America to stem the tide of migrants.
"I am completely stunned," Mujica told the cable channel. "Where is the American intelligence? Don't they know that all the countries are conspiring against the United States to make sure they have this crisis being made so they could charge for that crisis?"