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  • 2018-10-25 (xsd:date)
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  • Do These Photographs Show Central American Caravan Members Traveling by Train and Bus? (en)
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  • In October 2018, a caravan of refugees traveling from Honduras to the United States became the subject of some heated online rhetoric. This conversation was contaminated with conspiracy theories, such as the claim that these refugees were traveling by bus, train, or truck rather than by foot, and that they only walked during photo-ops for the news media. On 22 October 2018, Curtis Phillips posted two photographs to the Drawn the Swamp Facebook group purportedly showing this group of refugees traveling by train and bus, claiming that they [the news media] don't want you to see this: The last sentence of this post -- These are not Mexican buses ... -- alluded to the unfounded notion that the refugees were being funded by George Soros or the Democratic party. The argument, apparently, is that liberal groups in the United States are paying for buses and trains to transport refugees to the United States border. The two photographs in this post are real, but they are also outdated. Neither of them captured the caravan of refugees that was traveling toward the United States in October 2018. The top image was taken in 2013 by photographer Eduardo Verdugo and is available via the Associated Press, where it is accompanied by the following caption: The bottom photograph was snappped in Puebla, Mexico, in April 2018 by Jose Castanares and is available via Getty Images. Although this picture truly does capture migrants traveling via bus, it was taken after the Migrant Via Crucis caravan abandoned their plans to travel en masse to the United States: While these photographs are both outdated, some persons traveling with the October 2018 caravan of refugees have truly found other methods of transportation aside from walking. However, that circumstance doesn't apply to the majority of people in this caravan (which at one point consisted of more than 7,000 people), nor did the news media did not ignore this fact. Dozens of photographs from credible main stream news outlets show members of this caravan riding in cars and on the back of trucks. A report from CNBC noted that many of these rides were offered by sympathetic Mexicans who also provided food and water to the traveling refugees: (en)
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