States bordering Mexico prepare shelters for migrants

Migrants deported from the United States stand on the El Chaparral border pedestrian bridge in Tijuana, Mexico, January 21. (AP)

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico, Jan. 23 (AP): Mexico set up sprawling tents on the U.S. border on Wednesday as it prepared for President Donald Trump to make good on his promise to carry out mass expulsions. In a vacant lot near the border with El Paso, Texas, cranes lifted the metal frames of tent shelters in Ciudad Juárez. Enrique Serrano, an official in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juárez is located, said the tents erected for Mexican deportees were only the initial phase of a possible larger operation, and that authorities could intensify if the number of migrants gathered at the border continues to increase. to go up.

He suggested that migrants from other countries deported from the United States would be transferred to Mexico City or southern areas of Mexico, as they have done before. Nogales, Mexico – across the street from Nogales, Arizona – announced it would build shelters on soccer fields and in a gymnasium. The border towns of Matamoros and Piedras Negras have launched similar efforts.

At a border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, on Tuesday evening, a man shouted to reporters that he was being deported as part of a group arrested that morning in farm fields near Denver. Another man said he was part of a group brought from Oregon. Everyone carried their belongings in a small orange bag. The two men’s accounts could not be independently confirmed. The number of people deported Tuesday was lower than the daily average of around 500 last year, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum noted during her daily press briefing.

And many border shelters that had long offered refuge to migrants remained relatively empty compared to the growing number of migrants seen a year earlier. Yet those in charge of these migrant shelters, like José María Garcia, director of the Movimiento Juventud 2000 shelter in Tijuana, were preparing for what might happen. “Mass expulsions in the United States and the arrival of thousands of migrants from the south could overwhelm the city of Tijuana and other border towns, creating a crisis,” he said. Even if the rapid acceleration of deportations – as Trump promises – faces logistical and financial problems. challenges.

The Mexican government is building nine shelters in border towns to accommodate deportees. He said he would also use existing facilities in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros to house migrants whose appointments to seek asylum in the United States were canceled on Inauguration Day. Sheinbaum said Mexico would provide humanitarian aid to migrants from other countries whose asylum appointments were canceled, as well as those sent to wait in his country under the revived policy known as Stay in Mexico. Mexico wants to eventually and voluntarily send them back to their countries, she said.