MEXICAN officials cleared a migrant tent camp next to the US border in Matamoros on Wednesday.

US officials have been ramping up the pressure on Mexico to reduce the number of migrants reaching the border, closing key border rail crossings into Texas to stop people hopping freight cars into the country.

Migrants set up the Matamoros encampment on the Rio Grande, across from Brownsville, Texas, in late 2022. 

It once held as many as 1,500 migrants, but many tents were vacated in recent months as migrants waded across the river to the US.

Segismundo Doguin, the head of the local office of Mexico's immigration agency, said officials were “removing any tents that we see are empty.”

But Jose, a Honduran migrant who would give only his first name, claimed some of the 200 remaining migrants had been practically forced to leave the camp when the clearance began late on Tuesday.

“They ran us out,” he said, recalling that people were given short notice to move their tents and belongings out of the way and felt intimidated by the bulldozers moving through the tents. “You had to run for your life to avoid an accident.”

About 70 migrants flung themselves into the river on Tuesday night and crossed into the US. They remained trapped for hours along the riverbank under layers of barbed wire erected by Texan authorities.

As many as 10,000 migrants have been arrested daily on the south-west US border during December. 

Mexico already has over 32,000 soldiers and National Guard troopers assigned to enforcing immigration laws.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wants the US to send more development aid to migrants’ home countries and to eliminate sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela which he says feeds the exodus north.