Mexico City – Jairo Mauricio Ramirez did not have to say many goodbyes in Honduras. A 16-year-old orphan, he joined thousands of US-bound migrants and refugees last month when they came through Ocotepeque, his hometown.

Ramirez hopes to make it to the US to find work and continue his schooling beyond the Grade 7 level he was able to complete. He would like to be a doctor or an engineer.

“I always liked studying, but I could not afford to continue,” Ramirez told Al Jazeera.

When Ramirez was eight years old, his father died in an accident. When he was 12, his mother died of a heart attack. He has no siblings.

Ramirez lived with an uncle, but his uncle left Honduras a few months ago to migrate to the US. Ramirez has not heard from him since. He had a job at a local hardware store for a while, but was let go.

“There is no work these days,” he said.

When Al Jazeera spoke with Ramirez, he was waiting in line for a donated blanket to stay warm during the cold Mexico City nights. He and several thousand other Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty were staying in a stadium that had been transformed into a makeshift refugee camp.

Managed by the Mexico City government and the city human rights commission, the camp was abuzz with activity all week, as groups large and small trickled into the capital city.

Migrants and refugees rested in the stadium bleachers, large tents in the field, and grassy areas outside the stadium. Others received medical attention, watched their kids being entertained by clowns, or waited in line for food, clothing and blankets. Little cheering circles formed around impromptu dance and song performances here and there on the sports complex grounds.

An estimated 5,000 Central Americans stayed at the stadium this week, and thousands more are slowly making their way up through southern Mexico in subsequent caravans from Honduras and El Salvador. Preparations for more caravans are in the works. Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, and other Latin Americans have also joined the various waves of the ongoing exodus.

Ramirez made it the first 1,650km through Guatemala and up to Mexico City. Like most of the thousands of migrants and refugees, he wants to make it the next 2,700km to the US border.

At an assembly Thursday evening, the migrants and refugees voted to choose a route to the Tijuana border crossing. It is more than 1,000km further away than the closest points of entry to the US, but it is a safer route. It avoids parts of northeastern Mexico with high rates of homicides and forced disappearances, including of migrants and refugees.

The assembly chose to depart at 5am local time (11:00 GMT) Friday, but plans changed overnight and the majority of migrants and refugees at the stadium chose to stay in the hopes of obtaining bus transport to the border.

Many people chose not to wait, however, and hundreds of people set out Friday morning towards Queretaro, along the route to Tijuana. The remaining thousands plan to leave before dawn on Saturday, migrant and refugee caravan spokespeople said at a press conference on Friday.

‘Asylum not a loophole, it’s a lifeline’

The migrant and refugee caravans have not yet reached their halfway point to the US border, but the administration of US President Donald Trumphas been reinforcing the border with concertina wire and a heavy military presence. 

More than 5,000 active duty troops have been deployed to border areas in California, Arizona and Texas, and thousands more may be on the way in the near future. Last week, US President Donald Trump announced that any rocks thrown at troops along the border will be considered firearms.

Trump also announced plans to indefinitely detain asylum seekers in makeshift tent camps in the desert while their asylum claims are processed. 

The administration went further on Thursday and announced plans to restrict asylum claims to official points of entry into the US. An Interim Final Rule granted Trump broad authority to block or restrict asylum claims “if he determines it is in the national interest to do so”, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in a joint statement Thursday.

“Our asylum system is overwhelmed with too many meritless asylum claims from aliens who place a tremendous burden on our resources, preventing us from being able to expeditiously grant asylum to those who truly deserve it,” according to Nielsen and Whitaker.

Trump signed an presidential proclamation on Friday that puts those regulations into practice.

Migrant and human rights groups quickly condemned the measure as illegal. US legislation and international law state that any person can seek asylum whether or not they cross the border at an official point of entry, they pointed out.

“Asylum is not a loophole, it is a lifeline. This policy needlessly places the lives of thousands of people in danger,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General Kami Naidoo said Thursday in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit Friday to challenge the asylum restrictions.

“Neither the president nor his cabinet can override the clear commands of our law, but that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. We’ll see him in court,” the group tweeted.

BREAKING: We just filed a lawsuit to challenge the president’s new asylum ban.

Neither the president nor his cabinet can override the clear commands of our law, but that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. We’ll see him in court.

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 9, 2018

‘We were all threatened’

The drastic measures along the southern border of the US have not deterred the thousands of northbound migrants and refugees. Their plan all along has been to present themselves at official points of entry to claim asylum.

Fatima del Carmen was already on her way when she joined the caravan. Last month, del Carmen, her 20-year-old daughter and her 21-year-old son-in-law fled their home in La Libertad, a small city in southern El Salvador, on the Pacific coast.

After making their way through Guatemala, the trio crossed the Suchiate River into Mexico on a raft. They stayed in Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, for a week, after a local man offered them a room.

There they joined the caravan after a relative alerted them to the thousands of Hondruans on their way.  

Del Carmen and her relatives fled after receiving death threats from gang members. She and her daughter lived in a neighbourhood controlled by the Barrio 18 gang, but her son-in-law lived in another area of the city controlled by the MS-13 gang.

Both gangs originated in Los Angeles, California, and only also set down roots and spread in Central America following a wave of deportations of Salvadorans from the US.

The problems started after the family went to the beach to swim. Del Carmen’s son-in-law was from MS-13 controlled territory but that particular beachfront area is controlled by Barrio 18, and crossing the gang divide can have serious consequences even for unaffiliated residents, del Carmen said

In many neighbourhoods in cities around El Salvador, people are stuck in the territory of whichever gang controls where they live, said del Carmen. Her son-in-law was threatened with violence, and when del Carmen and her daughter stepped in to stand up for him, they all received death threats.

“They threatened all three of us,” said del Carmen.

The threats were the final straw, but the challenges and risks presented by violence and extortion in their neighbourhood were far from new.

Del Carmen made a living baking bread and selling it while walking through the city streets. Usually gang members left street vendors alone, opting to target stationary businesses for extortion, but sometimes when they were drunk or high, they would also demand money from local street vendors, she said.

“I would have to give $10 or $20. I would always give it,” said del Carmen.

That is approximately the same range as her daily earnings from bread sales, but paying was preferable to losing all the bread and cash she carried at any given moment, said del Carmen.

Al Jazeera spoke with del Carmen and her relatives earlier this week while they rested at the Mexico City stadium, nestled together in a spot between sets of stairs halfway up the stadium bleachers. Having had a chance to rest between long stretches on foot and hitchhiking, the family was in good spirits.

Del Carmen’s original plan was to gradually head north up through Mexico, working along the way. But she and her daughter and son-in-law were relieved to be able to join the thousands of mainly Hondurans for safety and company.

Between the three of them, they have an uncle, an aunt, and some friends in the US, and making it across the border is their goal. Del Carmen had heard about some of Trump’s drastic border measures, such as sending troops, but still holds out a bit of hope the US president may alter his plans before the group makes it to Tijuana.

“Maybe he will have a change of heart,” said del Carmen.

President Donald Trump on Friday floated the possibility that the race for the U.S. Senate in Arizona might need to be redone because of alleged “electoral corruption.”

The electoral contest between Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Martha McSally, both current members of the House, is one of the key races around the country that has yet to be called as election officials are still counting thousands of ballots. The fight to fill the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake took a dramatic turn Thursday when state officials announced Sinema had taken a lead over McSally with a razor-thin edge of about 8,000 votes.

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Election officials are still counting ballots in crucial counties such as the state’s largest, Maricopa County, where voters are being allowed to resolve discrepancies with their mail-in ballots in cases where the signature on the voter registration doesn’t match that on the return envelopes. Writing online on Friday, Trump suggested the activity might be fraudulent.

“Just out — in Arizona, SIGNATURES DON’T MATCH,” Trump wrote aboard Air Force One en route to Paris. “Electoral corruption – Call for a new Election? We must protect our Democracy!”

Voters have up to five days after Election Day to “cure” their ballots in Maricopa and Pima counties, which combined represent a total of 425,000 uncounted votes. Voters may need to cure ballots if their signatures change or if they can no longer sign as they used to because of a disease or disability. Election administrators are calling the voters with ballot issues to ensure they cast a vote.

Republicans are uneasy about the possibility that a state traditionally seen as a conservative stronghold might be tilting to the left. Four local GOP parties have filed a lawsuit challenging the signature curing process, asking the court either to stop the process or allow the state government to take control of it. A judge was set to hear the case Friday.

Neither candidate vying for the seat has conceded defeat.

Similar election issues and legal challenges have embroiled other crucial, high-profile races, such as the Senate and governor’s race in Florida, and the governor’s race in Georgia.

Trump on Friday also cried foul about the yet-to-be-decided Senate and gubernatorial races in Florida, claiming without evidence that Democrats were engaging in “election theft” to deny Republican Gov. Rick Scott the Senate seat.

Image: Andrew Lichtenstein/ Corbis via Getty Images

Dhaka, Bangladesh – This time every year, Dhaka’s intelligentsia, clad in their best, gather at the neatly-trimmed lawns of the Bangla Academy to enthrall a crowd of literature lovers with their poetry readings and animated talks.

Held since 2011, the three-day Dhaka Lit Fest (DLF) kicked off on Thursday, bringing together once again writers, journalists, historians and artists from around the world to the bustling South Asian metropolis.

But this year, one particular absence has cast its long shadow over the Bangladeshi capital’s most coveted cultural event, or “the elephant in the room” as one of the attendees put it: that of acclaimed photographer Shahidul Alam, a regular panelist in the festival’s various sessions over the years.

The 63-year-old has been held by Bangladesh’s authorities for speaking out against the country’s government. He was picked up from his home in Dhaka on August 5, hours after his remarks over massive student protests were broadcast on Al Jazeera.

Alam has been charged under the stringent Information and Communication Technology Act for “spreading propaganda and false information against the government”.

‘Orwellian nightmare’

A close associate of DLF organisers, Alam was a frequent participant in the festival’s earlier editions.

Yet, the only panelist to have so far spoken out for Alam this year has been Nandita Das, an Indian actress and director who called him an upholder of freedom of expression.

“We should all raise our voice for him,” Das said.

Alam’s wife, Rahnuma Ahmed, said she was “surprised” when DLF organisers did not even send a customary invite for her detained husband.

“Shahidul Alam did not merely attend Dhaka Lit Fest. He was an active participant, either as a keynote speaker or moderator or a panelist,” Ahmed told Al Jazeera.

Alam’s niece, Sofia Karim, said the silence over Alam’s imprisonment at the DLF is “a sign of how far things in Bangladesh have degenerated into an Orwellian nightmare”.

“My uncle has been a participant at Dhaka Lit Fest many a times and they don’t mention him? They must realise that they look ridiculous at best and complicit at worst,” she told Al Jazeera.

Karim said she was “thankful” of the Bangladeshis and foreign participants who spoke out or questioned Alam’s absence at the festival.

“Their solidarity will go down in history as will others’ silence.”

Shrinking space for free speech

Alam’s arrest has become emblematic of the shrinking space for freedom of speech in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, activists say.

The country recently passed a stringent Digital Security Act, which authorises prison sentences up to 14 years for collecting information against the government.

A draft Broadcast Law is also under consideration, which seeks to allow the government to jail a person for giving out “misleading and false” information in a television talk show.

“The ground for discourse seems to have shifted so much that mere criticism of the regime can now be regarded as treason,” wrote Kanak Mani Dixit, founding editor of Himal Southasia.

In an open letter to DLF organisers, a leading publisher and two academics said the holding of the festival in such a situation “will only operate as a cynical example of culture and art washing”.

“Any appearance of free or fierce expression or debate at the Lit Fest will be merely that, appearance, and deflect from the clampdowns and violence inflicted on those who dare cross government-sanctioned boundaries,” said the letter.

Organisers reject charges

K Anis Ahmed, one of the three DLF directors, dismissed allegations that there were no discussions on freedom of expression at the festival as “not true”.

“We called for repeal of the Digital Security Act at the opening ceremony,” Ahmed told Al Jazeera, adding that the festival directors support the stand of Das, the Indian actress.

“DLF has been held at considerable risk, for example during the killing of the bloggers. It has spoken out for all kinds of free-speech victims in Bangladesh,” he said.

At least 10 bloggers were killed by right-wing assailants between 2013 and 2016, mainly for their secularist writings.

“We have very fond memories of Shahidul ‘bhai’ [brother],” said Sadaf Saaz, another DLF director. “And he, more than anybody, would have wanted us to carry on with this difficult fight for literary space.”

“We never told a single writer that she or he can’t say anything. The government too has never instructed us to change any topic of discussion,” she told Al Jazeera.

But Karim said the organisers could have shown “more courage”.

“I think most involved know deep down how much courage it took for my uncle and others like him to defend the artists’ space in Bangladesh, courage that most don’t have.”