As Migrants Line Up, Hoping for Asylum, a Quiet Day at a Busy California Border

TIJUANA, Mexico — The vanguard of what President Trump has labeled an invasion force formed an orderly line at about 6:45 a.m. on Thursday near a major border crossing between Tijuana and the United States and waited patiently.

About 80 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who have been traveling with a large migrant caravan had come to the crossing, with stories of victimization and persecution, to make an appointments for asylum interviews in the United States.

But other than the line of migrants, it was mostly business as usual along this westernmost stretch of the Mexico-United States southwest border.

A steady flow of pedestrians and cars traversed the official border crossings, in an apparently smooth and normal process. Contractors worked on the steel border fence that reaches across the beach and into the Pacific Ocean, unfurling concertina wire along the top of the barrier and across the sand while American military police looked on.

The migrants on line had been the first members of the caravan, which started in Central America more than a month ago, to make it to Mexico’s northern border. They arrived on Sunday, and by trying to set up their asylum interviews were now moving yet another step closer to their goal of reaching American soil.

Joe Rivano Barros, a field officer for Raices, a Texas-based advocacy group that has been helping the entourage, scoffed at the notion that this group was a menace to the United States.

They are poor, and harmless, he said, “and they’re excited to be part of the United States.”

Migrants from the caravan have been arriving in Tijuana since Sunday in spurts — scores here, hundreds there — entering the city mostly on donated buses.

Some 800 had made it by Wednesday night and hundreds more were expected to arrive by the end of the day on Thursday, and the rest over the next few days.

The caravan’s coordinators said they expected a total of about 5,000 migrants to gather in Tijuana and nearby municipalities by the end of the weekend, while some municipal and state authorities have offered a more conservative estimate of about 3,000 to 4,000.

For weeks leading up to the midterm elections, Mr. Trump and his administration issued frenetic warnings about the caravan’s threats to national security and the American economy.

The president, calling the caravan “an invasion,” deployed thousands of troops to reinforce border security, and border agents were reassigned to buttress staffing at major entry points.

“My plan is to cross to the other side,” said José Amaya, 36, a Honduran migrant, adding that he had not ruled out any option, legal or illegal.

But Irineo Mujica, a member of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a transnational advocacy group assisting the caravan, cautioned: “We are definitely not going to storm the wall.”

Although the caravan has not posed any apparent danger to the United States, it is already threatening a potential crisis for Tijuana and the surrounding state of Baja California.

Local and state officials have been scrambling to figure out how to shelter and care for the thousands of migrants. Even before the caravan’s arrival, the region was under stress because of a backlog in asylum applicants forced to wait as many as five or six weeks for an appointment to make their case at the American border.

Many have holed up in migrant shelters in the meantime.

With the caravan’s arrival this week, the region’s network of shelters is now close to or at capacity, officials said, and supplemental emergency shelters have been forced to open in churches and other places.

On Wednesday night, the authorities opened a temporary shelter in a sports complex in the city, but it has capacity for fewer than 400 migrants because, officials said, there was insufficient money to cover the costs of housing more.

State officials said the governor had appealed to the federal government for financial assistance to forestall a possible humanitarian crisis.

But some migrants from the caravan have avoided the shelters, saying they feared being trapped behind locked doors at night and detained by the migration authorities. Instead, they have slept outdoors — in parks and on the beach.

Many migrants who have already arrived have been biding their time and figuring out their next move: whether to apply for sanctuary in the United States, try to cross illegally or remain in Mexico and possibly seek legal status here.

For those who intend to apply for asylum — likely a minority of the total caravan — coordinators and advocates hope to organize legal workshops to review their cases and help them to prepare for their interviews with American border officials.

Last spring, advocates provided similar help to a large caravan of mostly Central American migrants that traversed Mexico and ended up in Tijuana. At its peak, that caravan numbered about 1,500, by some estimates.

Of those, several hundred eventually applied for asylum with hundreds of others either crossing illegally into the United States or remaining in Mexico.

Several migrants said Thursday that they were waiting for the rest of the caravan to show up before they settled on their strategy. Groups that have been helping to coordinate the caravan have inculcated in the participants the philosophy of strength in numbers.

And for many participants, the size of the caravan, which began in Honduras in mid-October, was a big draw, promising security from the perils of the migrant trail.

The high profile of the caravan also attracted an outpouring of humanitarian support along the way, making the migration nearly free for its participants, who survived on donated food, water, medical care, used clothing and other services.

But in some sectors of Tijuana society, patience with the caravan is already wearing thin. Late Wednesday night, a group of residents in an affluent beachside neighborhood confronted migrants who were spending the night in a park.

The residents cursed the migrants, telling them they were not welcome. A contingent of police rushed to the scene and kept the sides apart until the confrontation subsided.

Several migrants said they remained awake and vigilant for the rest of the night, worried they would be attacked while they slept.