Utterly defeated by the resolve of President Trump, caravan migrants from Central America are packing up and going home.

The San Diego Union-Tribune described the mood of the several thousand of them at their Tijuana base camp as subdued and morose.  The big Che Guevara-style border charge at the U.S. barricades Sunday didn't work out quite as the group's leftist organizers said it would.  It didn't even work out like the one they managed to get done at Mexico's southern border a few weeks earlier.  The glory of challenging gringo for the goodies never came.  And as a senior Border Patrol official told the Washington Examiner, they were sold "a bad bill of goods."  This raises the next question: when are the migrants going to get angry?  It's obvious they've been used, and it's about time they turn on their organizers.

Up until the protests in Tijuana ten days ago and that border-charging incident on Sunday, the migrants had been promised by their organizers that all would be fine and dandy.  The whole trip to get into the U.S. would be easy.  That was in repeated statements of the migrants, who told the press they were looking for work, early on in the caravan.  Democrats would support them, the public would melt at the sight of their kids in strollers, the press would be with them, and the Mexicans would be with them.  Better still, the U.S. border was a joke, and President Trump's warnings about not entering illegally were the roar of a paper tiger.  Better yet, a migrant caravan would offer protection from cartel human-smugglers.  It would all be so easy for them if they went as a group and applied pressure to be allowed in.

Instead, they got concertina wire, troops, and...after hurling stones, Intifada-style, mere tear gas, not bullets.  And no Che Guevara-style glory at challenging (as Hugo Chávez used to say) "the empire."

That's a lot of effort, a lot of walking, a lot of sore feet and danger and cost for some false promises.  What's more, it's got to be painful for them, because many are already disillusioned about their own country.  I recall talking with Honduran illegal aliens in Murietta, California a few years ago, when Obama was transporting illegal immigrants to that community amid protests and asking them why they didn't try to change things in their own country, given that they had a vote there.  A young woman explained to me that "it doesn't matter, it doesn't ever matter."

Now, after a big buildup, and sassy Honduran flag-waving and a festive atmosphere, the caravan migrants have been let down.

It was all such a waste of time.  Anyone serious about seeking asylum to the U.S. could have applied for it right there in Tegucigalpa from the comfort of their own homes.  There was no need to march up to Tijuana, make a mess, get sick, complain about the donated food, set up a smelly migrant camp, and make oneself unpopular enough to draw local protests.  The mission, frankly, was a failure.

That raises questions about what this caravan was really about.  Groups such as Pueblo Sin Fronteras and Honduran Chavista politicians whipped up the migrant caravan, promising migrants that it would be so easy if they all went together.  Pueblo Sin Fronteras told the press it had been successful in the past in organizing caravans and getting asylum-seekers through.  It was a phony promise, and it was a political project in the name of open borders and, by extension, votes for Democrats.  And now it's obvious that the migrants, marching with their kids in strollers, were used.

As these migrants begin to pack up, one can only wonder at what the fallout will be as President Trump stands victorious and word is out that the U.S. border will be defended.  At what point are these migrants going to turn on those rabidly left-wing organizers who used them as part of their political project and shut them down?

Image credit: CBS News screengrab from YouTube.