Secretary of State Antony Blinken is headed south to discuss illegal immigration with the Mexican regime while a migrant caravan estimated to be about at least 8,000 people deep and growing — the largest of its kind since June 2022 — marches north on the U.S. border.

The prospective invaders began their advance northward Sunday, walking from Tapachula, a city near Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, to Alvaro Obregón, reported the New York Post.If successful, this group will add to the strain already experienced at the border, which sees roughly 10,000 illegal aliens storm over daily.

Despite claims that the caravan comprises asylum seekers, leaders of the group made clear with a banner that read, "Exodus from poverty," that they were largely economic migrants.

While most of the economic migrants appear to be from Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras, the BBC indicated some also hail from Bangladesh, India, and other oriental locales.

Anti-borders activist Luis García Villagrán, accompanying the prospective invaders, indicated that the caravan assembled and began marching toward the American border because Tapachula is overwhelmed.

The local paper Diario del Sur indicated that an estimated 100,000 illegal aliens are parked in Tapachula, many of whom are keen on going to the United States.

"The problem is that the southern border [with Guatemala] is open and 800 to 1,000 people are crossing it daily. If we don't get out of Tapachula, the town will collapse," said Villagrán. "We tell the Mexican state that it has left us no other option but to take the coastal highway and walk as far as we can get."

While the caravan is presently at least 8,000 strong, Villagrán indicated it could grow to at least 15,000 people.

"We won't stop — we'll keep walking," he threatened.

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Biden and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador are set to discuss the border crisis over the phone Wednesday.

When they met earlier this year in Mexico City for the North American Leaders' Summit, Obrador remarked, "President Biden, you are the first president of the United States in a very long time that has not built not even one meter of wall, and ... we thank you for that, sir."

The Mexican leader also noted that "some may not like" Biden's refusal to secure the border, particularly "the conservatives."

Following Wednesday's presidential chat over the phone, Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall will meet with Obrador to further discuss the surge in illegal immigration.

According the State Department, Blinken will "reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, and underscore the urgent need for lawful pathways and additional enforcement actions by partners throughout the region."

CNN reported that ahead of the meeting, Homeland Security officials identified a number of ways the Mexican regime — which has been highly critical of Texas' efforts to combat illegal immigration — could help to prevent continuing to make its migrant problem America's problem. Mexico could, for instance, move illegal aliens south; control its railways, which are used to move migrants north; and provide illegal aliens with incentives not to trek to the border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that over 6.85 million illegal aliens stole into the U.S. from Mexico between the time President Joe Biden took office and last month. Many more are suspected to have entered in undetected.

Border officials told Fox News' Bill Melugin there have been over 730,000 migrant encounters at the southern border since Oct. 1 and that December was set to break all-time records for border crossings.

The vast majority (61.17%) of the illegal aliens encountered at the border have been single adults, many of whom appear to be military-age males.

"We are facing a serious challenge along the southwest border and C.B.P. and our federal partners need more resources from Congress — as outlined in the supplemental budget request — to enhance border security and America's national security," Troy Miller, acting leader of CBP, said in a statement Friday.

Extra to new security threats and a cheapening of American sovereignty, the record influx of illegal aliens will also cost the American taxpayer dearly.

Blaze News recently detailed the findings of a new study that found, on the basis of U.S. Census Bureau data from the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation, that 59% of illegal alien households rely on taxpayer-funded welfare.

The House Committee on Homeland Security noted in its Nov. 13 interim report on the "Historic Dollar Costs of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' Open-Border Policies" that "for every one million parolees released into the United States on Mayorkas' watch, the cost in federal welfare benefits that will be incurred could total $3 billion annually, with those costs starting to kick in January 2026."

The congressional report highlighted a CIS estimate that put the yearly cost of housing known gotaways and illegal aliens who have been released into the U.S. under Biden's watch at $451 billion.

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