Thousands of Central American migrants travelling in caravan arrive in Mexico

Thousands of Central American migrants travelling in a caravan arrived in the Mexican capital on Monday and began to fill up a sports stadium. The migrants are still hundreds of miles from their goal of reaching the US a day before midterm elections, in which President Donald Trump has made their journey a central campaign issue. By Monday afternoon 2,000 or more had arrived at the Jesus Martinez stadium, which has a capacity of about three times that. They eagerly began sifting through donations of clothes, gave themselves sponge baths, lunched on chicken and rice under the shade of tents and picked up thin mattresses to hunker down for the night.

Several thousand more migrants were trudging along the highway between the city of Puebla and the capital, catching a lift from passing vehicles when possible.

National Commission human rights officer Dr. Edgar Corzo Sosa told the Associated Press that at least 4,500 people had arrived - with numbers expected to keep increasing throughout the day.

As US election day neared, Trump has seized on the caravan and portrayed it as a major threat, even though such caravans have happened regularly over the years and largely passed unnoticed. He ordered thousands of troops to the US-Mexico border when the migrants were still hundreds of miles to the south, threatened to detain asylum seekers in tents cities and has insinuated without proof that there are criminals or even terrorists in the group.