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Many of the more than 3,000 Central American migrants who reached the Mexican border with California via a caravan said Saturday they did not feel welcome in Tijuana, where hundreds of additional migrants were heading after more than a month of road.
The vast majority camped in an outdoor sports complex, sleeping on a clay baseball field and under bleachers overlooking the steel walls topped with barbed wire at the recently strengthened border between the United States and Mexico. The city opened the complex after filling the other shelters. Religious groups provided portable showers, bathrooms and sinks. The federal government estimated that the mass of migrants in Tijuana could reach 10,000 people.
The mayor of Tijuana, Juan Manuel Gastelum, described the arrival of migrants as "avalanche", which the city is ill prepared to handle. They calculated that they would stay in Tijuana for at least six months while waiting to file an asylum application. US border inspectors handle about 100 asylum applications a day at the main Tijuana border crossing to San Diego. Asylum seekers record their names on a tattered notebook run by migrants who had more than 3,000 names even before the arrival of the caravan.
While many people in Tijuana are sensitive to the plight of migrants and are trying to help them, some local people have shouted insults, thrown stones and even punched migrants.
This is a stark contrast to the many Mexican communities that hosted the caravan with placards, music and clothing donations after it entered Mexico almost a month ago. Countless rural residents have squeezed fruit and water bags into the hands of migrants as they were crossing southern Mexico, wishing them a safe journey.
Alden Rivera, ambassador of Honduras to Mexico, visited Saturday the outdoor sports complex. Rivera expects the migrants to be housed for eight months or more, and said he was working with Mexico to get more funds to feed them and care for them. It expects the number of migrants in Tijuana to reach 3,400 over the weekend, and another 1,200 migrants to Mexicali, another border town a few hours east. from Tijuana. An additional 1,500 migrants plan to reach the US border region next week.
According to Mr. Rivera, 1,800 Hondurans have returned to their country since the launch of the caravan on October 13, and he hoped that others would make that decision.
"We want them to go back to Honduras," Rivera said, adding that every migrant had to decide whether to go home, seek asylum in Mexico or queuing to seek asylum in the United States.
The Mexican Ministry of the Interior announced Friday that 2,697 Central American migrants had sought asylum in Mexico as part of a program launched on October 26 by the country to obtain more quickly the credentials needed to live, work and study in southern Mexico.
Ivis Munoz, 26, considered returning to Honduras. The coffee grower called his father in Atima, Honduras, on Saturday to consult him on his next move a few days after being attacked on a beach by residents of Tijuana. His father told him to hold on.
Munoz has a bullet in his leg. A gang member shot him a year ago in Honduras and threatened to kill him when he saw him again. Munoz said he later discovered that his girlfriend had cheated on him with the gang member.
He is afraid to go home but feels uncomfortable in Tijuana.
Munoz was asleep on a beach in Tijuana with about two dozen other migrants when rocks fell on them around 2 am Wednesday. He heard a man shout in the darkness: "We do not want you here! Go back to your country! & # 39; & # 39;
Munoz and the others got up and sought refuge, heading for nearby residential streets. When the sun rose, they took a truck passing through downtown Tijuana. Now he stays at the sports complex.
"I do not know what to do," said Munoz. He fears that the United States will not grant him asylum and that he will be deported when he tries to enter the country without authorization.
Carlos Padilla, a 57-year-old migrant from Progreso, Honduras, said that a resident of Tijuana had shouted, "Migrants are pigs", while he was recently on the street. He did not answer.
"We did not come here to cause trouble, we came here with love and with the intention of asking for asylum," said Padilla. "But they treat us like animals here."
Padilla said he would probably return to Honduras if the US rejected his asylum claim.
The long expected stay of migrants in Tijuana has raised concerns about the ability of the border city of more than 1.6 million people to manage the influx.
Officials in Tijuana said they turned the municipal gymnasium and recreation complex into a shelter to prevent migrants from accessing public spaces. The private shelters in the city have a maximum capacity of 700 people. The municipal complex can hold up to 3,000 people; as of Friday night, there were 2,397 migrants.
Some business owners near the shelter complained on Saturday about the handling and theft of migrants.
Francisco Lopez, 50, owns a furniture store nearby. He added that a group of migrants had bought food in a small grocery store just a few doors from here and that he feared that crime in the area would increase as the migrants stay at the shelter for a long time.
Other neighbors expressed empathy.
"These poor people have left their country and are in an unknown place," said Maria de Jesus Izarraga, 68, who lives two blocks from the complex.
While Izarraga was talking from the front door of his house, a man interrupted to ask for money in order to buy a plate of beans. He said that he had come with the caravan and that he had blisters on his feet. She gave him some pesos and continued to talk: "I hope everything goes as planned."
Outside the complex, migrant groups criss-crossed the street to receive donations of clothes and coolers filled with bottled water, donated by charities and other people seeking to help migrants.
Felipe Garza, 55, acknowledged that many residents of his hometown do not want to help, while other volunteers from his church and he handed coffee and rolls to the impromptu municipal shelter. "It is uncomfortable to receive such a multitude of people, but it is a reality we face," he said.
Garza assumed that if the Central Americans behaved well, Tijuana would kiss them just as did thousands of Haitians in 2016. These Haitians have since opened restaurants and hair salons and registered in the local universities.
Police officer Victor Coronel nodded but wondered how much more the city could bear. "The only thing we can do is hope that the President [Donald] Trump opens his heart a little, said Coronel.
Trump, who sought to turn the caravan into a campaign issue in last week's election, went on Twitter Friday to launch new criticism of migrants.
"Is not it ironic that large caravans of people are walking towards our border in search of American asylum because they are afraid of being in their country – yet they shake proudly … the flag of their country . Can this be possible? Yes, because all this is a big jerk, and the American taxpayer pays the price, "said Trump in a pair of tweets.
