US-bound migrant caravan sets off from southern Mexico

Hundreds of migrants continued their journey to the United States on foot Tuesday from a city in southern Mexico, appealing for permits that would allow them to travel freely to the border.

The migrants, mostly from Venezuela and Central America, marched along a highway from Tapachula in Chiapas state near the Guatemalan border.

Some of them complained of delays in receiving humanitarian visas from the immigration authorities that would allow them to traverse Mexico without being deported.

"The immigration people told us that they were going to help us," said Ana Perez, a Salvadoran traveling with her two children.

"In the end they still beat us... They took away our tents," added Perez, who said she had lost an eye because of gang violence in her home country.

Thousands of migrants fleeing violence and poverty travel across Mexico every year for the US border.

While some pay people smugglers to transport them in trucks, others join caravans undertaking the long journey on foot, enduring hunger, exhaustion and insecurity.

The marches are also a way to protest against delays in receiving humanitarian visas.

The Mexican government has come under increased pressure from the United States to tackle the highly contentious issue of migration in an election year.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has said that if he returns to the White House he will finish a wall along the US-Mexican border and carry out the "largest deportation operation in the history of our country."