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Thousands of Central American migrants are embarking on an overcrowded and overcrowded sports complex at the sight of the United States, while a small number of them have chosen to return home after clashes. with border forces.
Men, women and children in the caravan, mainly Hondurans, began to pile up in the Tijuana complex about three weeks ago. They are now over 6,000 in a space that the city government has first prepared for one-third more.
While the gloomy reality that asylum seekers in the United States will likely have to stay in the border town of Mexico for months, 350 people have asked authorities to help them return home.
Jose Luis Tepeu, 22, from Guatemala, slept on cardboard boxes on the floor. He added that he would only wait five more days to see if help would be brought to take him to the United States or even to Canada.
"If they do not come, I will go home," he said, claiming that in Mexico, wages were too low to allow him to stay and send money. Money at home to help his family. "You do not win well here."
To apply for asylum, migrants must first register on a waiting list to see US border authorities. The list already had a backlog of several weeks before the arrival of the caravan. Mexican-American discussions to keep migrants in Mexico longer add to uncertainty.
On Sunday, US border guards fired tear gas at a smaller group, including women and children, who rushed to the border.
The violence seems to have shocked some people and dozens of others have asked to be sent home voluntarily Monday, said Rodolfo Olimpo, head of migration in Tijuana.
Overcrowding has also contributed to the spread of the disease. There have been several cases of respiratory diseases, lice and chickenpox, according to three city officials who refused to be named because they were not allowed to talk to the media.
The migrants, who were too numerous to settle in reception centers, who had traveled about 4,800 km since mid-October, were taken to the complex to wait for the American and Mexican authorities to agree. on how to treat them.
Many live in tents, others in shelters made of trash bags or cold floor boards, surrounded by backpacks and blankets, undergoing severe hardships and lack of privacy, as they do. Had learned to do every day of their daily lives. -the treks of northern Honduras.
Despite the difficult conditions, many seemed determined to wait in Mexico for their chance to plead their case in front of the United States, with more than 600 applications for work permits in Mexico Tuesday, according to the Foreign Ministry.
"It has cost me a lot to walk 15 to 20 hours a day and to go back now: no," said Anabell Pineda, 26, who pitched a tent in the stadium next door. a pile of bags and rolled blankets. .
Pineda, who had been traveling for nearly a month since the violent Honduran town of San Pedro Sula with her six year old son, said she arrived in Tijuana 13 days earlier, feeling bad.
When she learned that it would be almost impossible to travel quickly to the United States with the current US policy, she decided to be patient and obtain a Mexican work permit in the meantime.
At the resort, men washed with buckets in the shower, next to portable toilets and giant mud puddles. Women, suspicious of unexpected looks, bathed in clothes.
Katherin Arita, a 17-year-old Honduran, sniffs through a stuffy nose, said she's been losing weight since leaving home a month and a half ago. She expected to have to wait four months before entering the United States.
"It's dangerous what I do, it's dangerous," she said.
In a gym where the first arrivals of the caravan had installed pretty rows of thin mattresses, a city official said there had been an outbreak of chicken pox.
US President Donald Trump has threatened this week to "permanently" close the US-Mexico border if Mexico does not evict the Central Americans meeting in Tijuana.
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, who stepped down this weekend, said Central American migrants are welcome in Mexico.
But he added that migrants had the right to seek asylum in the United States and that Mexico had repeatedly refused to ask the United States to force them to seek refuge in Mexico.
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