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| - Guatemala on Monday authorized the use of force at its border with Honduras to block a new US-bound migrant caravan it said posed a coronavirus contagion risk. Hundreds of migrants gathered in northern Honduras appeared set to make a push into Guatemala on Tuesday, hoping to travel onwards to Mexico and the United States, according to Guatemalan migration authorities. President Alejandro Giammattei signed a decree placing five border departments in a "preventive state" to deal with migrants seeking to enter Guatemala without the required travel documents or negative coronavirus test results. The caravan risked creating a "public security crisis" by "aggravating the epidemiological health emergency" posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, states the decree. During the preventive state, it would be possible to "dissolve by force any gathering, group or public demonstration that takes place without the required authorization," the document added. The five departments are Izabal, Zacapa, Chiquimula, El Progreso and Peten. Thousands of people -- most of them from El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua -- have been surging northward in the hope, they say, of escaping unemployment, poverty and violence in their home countries. They hope for a warmer welcome, and a better life, in the America of President Joe Biden after years of anti-immigrant rhetoric from Donald Trump. Under Biden, the United States has not been deporting children or adolescents who arrive unaccompanied. Last week, the Biden administration sent envoys to Guatemala and Mexico to seek help in controlling the migrant influx, prompting the two countries to launch a joint military-police operation along their common border. In February alone, US border agents tallied some 100,000 undocumented migrants reaching the southern border, including about 9,500 unaccompanied minors. The US government is bracing for a 20-year high in arrivals. In January, Guatemala returned thousands of migrants to Honduras after police and soldiers used sticks and tear gas to thwart their northward march. hma/mlr/ft
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