President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador defended the decision to deploy the National Guard on Mexico's southern border on Monday. The armed forces were sent to stop a migrant caravan of about 1,500 people. The president said that one of the main objectives was to guarantee the safety of the migrants, however, images of the soldiers repressing and closing the passage to the migrants traveled around the world.

The presence of the security forces on the border between Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, has been severely criticized by immigration and human rights specialists. Many say that this is the wall that Mexico built to prevent migrants from reaching the American dream. Perhaps this premise was made clear on Monday, with the strong operative implemented before the arrival of a new caravan.

The media reported around 1,500 Central Americans who faced the deployment of the National Guard that prevented their passage, but the objective of reaching the U.S. pushed many of the migrants, who chose to cross the Suchiate River en masse, protecting each other.

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At his daily press conference, the president first avoided the issue, merely reporting that Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard would be speaking on the matter later. But at the insistence of reporters, who questioned why he preferred to concentrate the soldiers on the southern border, Lopez Obrador jumped to the defense of the operation.

He said the objective was to guarantee immigrant's human rights, to offer refuge "and although it seems contradictory: protection. Because if we don't take care of them, if we don't know who they are, if we don't have a record, they will pass through and arrive up north and get caught by criminal groups and attacked, because that's how it used to be, they would then disappear," the president said.

He also said this ensures that the law is applied without violating human rights. "We have achieved this, even yesterday. Our opponents would like to see repression, to get the photograph. They didn't say anything before and now they are on the hunt. To have the photo of a national guard hitting a migrant child. Well, no, because we are not the same," he added.

The secretaries of Foreign Affairs and the Interior, Marcelo Ebrard and Olga Sánchez Cordero, respectively, defended the intervention of the National Guard. They said it was aimed at regulating the transit and insisted that Mexico offers several options for undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.

Thousands of people from this new caravan wanted to overcome the siege formed by the National Guard, according to Foreign Secretary Ebrard. He rejected the idea that this new group represented an emergency for the country. "This caravan is formed every year. Sometimes they are more and sometimes less", he said that the origin also varies, but that in this case it was mostly integrated by immigrants from Honduras.

"Some of them tried to force their way in, the National Guard acted according to regulations, we have no injuries, we have no situation to regret," he said.

Ebrard said that given the massive presence of immigrants seeking to reach the United States, the National Institute of Migration was the one that requested the reinforcement of the National Guard, something that falls within its powers under the law.

He made it clear that despite the incident in which the soldiers were attacked with stones, no one was injured: "If someone was looking for violence in Mexico, they will not find it from the authorities".

Sanchez Cordero supported Ebrard and affirmed that when the immigrants tried to enter the country by force, the authorities intervened to demand an orderly transit. "In no way was there an act of repression and disturbance. It was simply to organize this migration".

The Foreign Affairs Secretary reiterated that Mexico's position continues to be that of offering refuge, in addition to social programs and temporary work in the southern region of the country and extending this possibility to the immigrants' country of origin.

Ebrard denied that any immigrants are currently in detention. "They are in migratory stations because we have obligations to fulfill. All assisted returns or returns require a process, it is not that when they are rescued, they are returned immediately by plane, because, among other things, there must be a registration and a whole procedure".

He further explained that for the time being, 110 immigrants have already been returned to Honduras, which was their country of origin, clarifying that this option was at the request of the undocumented immigrants. "Mexico has one of the most generous positions in the world regarding the immigrants who come into our country," he insisted.