'Migration isn't going to stop': Salvadorans join new caravans

Undeterred by Trump's threats and US policies, another group of refugees and migrants leave El Salvador.

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On Wednesday morning, he followed around 200 people departing from the capital city of San Salvador. Earlier this week, thousands of Hondurans had also headed towards Guatemala in an attempt to reach the United States.

The caravan is the fifth to leave El Salvador since last October. The majority of participants cite lack of economic opportunities and insecurity as reasons for leaving, and many hope to find safety in numbers by travelling in large groups while saving the thousands of dollars it costs to make the journey with a smuggler, according to surveys conducted by the International Organization for Migration.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR reports 49,726 Salvadorans requested asylum in the US in 2017, a more than eightfold increase from 2013. Salvadoran asylum requests in Mexico and Costa Rica are also on the rise.

A total of 235,708 people were forced to move in 2018 to escape threats or violence in the country of 6.3 million, and six out of 10 internally displaced people have considered leaving the country, more than half of them with eyes set of the US, surveys by the University Institute of Public Opinion at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University in San Salvador found.

Of some 2,700 Salvadorans that left the country in four caravans late last year, nearly 600 returned home, Aquiles Magana, head of El Salvador's National Council for the Protection and Development of Migrants and Their Families, told Al Jazeera.