The shelters on the Mexican border live an unprecedented situation with the absence of migrants. But this does not mean that migration has been contained.
There were moments, not long ago, in which the floor of the Dios Dios refuge in the Mexican city of Tijuana, on the border with the United States, was almost invisible: mattresses, curtains and migrant beds that cover space.
Today, however, the place seems very much: half of the available beds are not made and, in a corner, a handful of blue mattresses are stacked by emergency.
It seems that these are not emergency times in a city that does not know calm when it comes to migration.
Everything indicates that the rhetoric of the President of the United States Donald Trump – threatening the mass deportations and the closure of the mechanisms of legal immigration to contain what he considers an “invasion” – has had an effect: people are making less.
“At this moment, there are no significant arrivals in Mexico,” says Silvia Garduño, a spokesman for Unur, United Nations Agency for refugees in Mexico. “But we know that the causes of the exits remain.”
Tijuana, who shares a metropolitan area with San Diego, is the largest city in the region. It emerged following the demarcation of the borders and it was a century and a half ago the nervous point of the migratory flow towards the greatest power in the world.
There are 44 spaces dedicated here to the welcome and care of migrants, and none of them, according to the activists who visit them daily, is currently with more than half of their occupied ability.
BBC News Mundo, Spanish news service of the BBC, visited five and in all – instead of the usual row to use the bathroom, the electrical sockets of cell phones and the sound of the children who play and run – what we found were silence, empty stalls and cafés for flies.
According to UNHCR data, 90% of the city migrant population is now outside the shelters.
The situation is repeated in other border cities such as Tijuana.
In April, 8,000 people were arrested to illegally entered the country throughout the border area. A year ago there were 128,000, according to government statistics, a drastic reduction that Trump celebrates as a success of his rigid policy.
According to a CBS survey conducted before the current protests in Los Angeles, 50% of Americans approve how the president is facing the issue of immigration.
“We have never seen it before, only during the pandemic”, says Octavio, a table seller in the healing de chaparra, in Tijuana, a transition to the border in which this feeling of calm and silence also prevails.
‘Full Plate’ for criminals
A silence that does not mean that migration has been contained, warning activists: it means that migrants are coming or are trying to cross the border illegally.
The causes of migration – violence, poverty and persecution in countries such as Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua – continue or even worsen with the closure of the International Cooperation of the United States by the Trump government.
Desire and, for persecuted people, the need to migrate to the United States is impossible to contain, experts say.
“The hope of migrating can overcome anything”, says Judith Cabrera, director of the crisis center of the border line, a Tijuana refuge
Cabrera met the BBC News Mundo report on a cold and cloudy morning after gathering hours earlier with a group of Colombian migrants who had been deceived twice due to their obsession with crossing the border.
The alleged Coyote reports the activist, they told them that they would cross a tunnel for $ 800, that is, for a tenth of what it usually costs and a tunnel that did not exist for four decades.
“They put them in the car, led throughout the city and in the end they left them where they had been captured,” says Cabrera.
Then the same thing happened: some traffickers promised the intersection for $ 2,300. “Of course, because they cost more, they thought it was more right, but nothing was deceived again.”
He worsens him: “There is nothing that I can tell them that he can avoid this, and shows that the American dream is not over (…) people want to continue insisting on the crossing and do not realize the dangers involved because they prefer to keep the dream alive”.
“Trump is discouraging migration, and this is a complete dish for traffickers,” he concludes.
Transition settlement
Migrants who are not trying to cross illegally could wait where they have to see when a new opportunity arrives.
Trump has closed migratory care systems, such as CBP One, who allowed you to make an appointment to ask for asylum before entering the United States. The bet of many – 270,000 has been influenced by cancellations – is that it will reopen the system or will create a similar mechanism, which seems unlikely.
“The decision to remain where they are located is never definitive,” says María de Lourdes Madrano, director of Center 32, an organization that supports migrants in the shelters.
“They always believe that the next day they can open and resolve the situation and believe that moving away from the border reduces the possibility … because, after all that it costs to get here, they think that leaving is how to give up the dream.”
“The shelters are empty, but schools are full of foreigners,” he says, referring to children whose migrant parents have decided to settle in Tijuana, even temporarily.
‘Taking the Latins’
Wilker Hernández is 23 years old; He comes from the state of Merida, in Venezuela and a year ago, he tries to cross the United States, where he is part of his family, while the other remains in his country. He had a moment scheduled to present his documents on January 21, one day after Trump’s inauguration. Planning has been canceled.
Since then, he has become accustomed to the idea that his destination could be here: Tijuana, a city that has migration in his DNA, which is said to “have opportunities for everyone” and records the lowest unemployment rate in Mexico.
“We are in a kind of limbo in which we do not know what will happen,” says Hernández, who worked as a bricklayer in the Dios rupture refuge, where they are building functional accommodation outside the field area.
The neighboring neighborhood, known as Cañón del Alacrán, has experienced a boom In the last two years with the construction of relatively formal settlements by groups of migrants who have decided to extend their stay to Tijuana.
“I am still undecided, if I try to cross or go back,” he adds. “For now, I’m working because (…) Trump has closed the border, he is taking all the Latins, it’s a bit complicated, we are here and we don’t know what to do.”
Trump’s speech permeated among migrants. This can put them at greatest risk in front of mafias and coyote, but still reduces the hope of a better life, a possible life in the United States.
The President of the United States has promised a “mass deportation” of guessed people who, although far from mass, has a dissuasive effect.
Cabrera, Tijuana’s activist, asks the question as follows: “More than a mass deportation, what we are seeing is a deportation of the media and this, of course, has its effects on the trajectory and mental health of the migrant”.
There are almost no migrants in the shelters, but the situation of migrants has become more difficult now.
Source: Terra
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