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TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) – Many of the more than 3,000 Central American migrants who reached the Mexican border with California by caravan said Saturday they did not feel welcome in the city of Tijuana, where hundreds of others migrants have been heading for the road for more than a month.
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 estimates that the mass of migrants in Tijuana could soon reach 10,000 people.
The mayor of Tijuana, Juan Manuel Gastelum, described the arrival of migrants as "avalanche" that the city is poorly prepared to handle. They calculated that they would stay in Tijuana for at least six months while waiting for asylum applications. 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 ragged notebook run by migrants themselves, which numbered more than 3,000 names even before the arrival of the caravan.
While many in Tijuana are sensitive to the plight of migrants and are trying to help them, some residents have shouted insults, thrown stones and even punched migrants.
This is in stark contrast to the many Mexican communities that welcomed the caravan with placards, music, and clothing donations after entering Mexico almost a month ago. Many rural residents have pressed fruits and bags of water into the hands of migrants as they travel to 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 hopes other people will 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 Muñoz, 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 he 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! 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 feared that the United States would not grant him asylum and that he would be deported if he tried 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," Padilla said. "But they treat us like animals here."
Padilla said he would probably return to Honduras if the US rejected his asylum claim.
The long stay planned by migrants in Tijuana has raised concerns about the ability of the border city of more than 1.6 million residents 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 accommodate up to 3,000 people; as of Friday night, there were 2,397 migrants.
Some business owners near the shelter complained on Saturday about theft 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 a complex.
As Izarraga was talking from the door of his home, a man broke off to ask for money 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 people in his hometown did not want to help because he and other volunteers in his church offered coffee and rolls to migrants at the impromptu municipal shelter. "It's uncomfortable to receive such a multitude of people, but it's a reality we have to face," he said.
Garza assumed that if the Central Americans behaved well, Tijuana would kiss them just as they did thousands of Haitians in 2016. These Haitians have since opened restaurants, hair salons and registered in the United States. local universities.
Police officer Victor Coronel agrees but wonders how much the city can still bear. "The only thing we can do is hope that President (Donald) Trump opens his heart a bit," said Coronel.
Trump, who tried to make the caravan a campaign issue in last week's elections, went on Twitter Friday to launch new criticism of migrants.
"Is not it ironic that large caravans of people are walking towards our border, wanting to get asylum from the United States because they are afraid of being in their country – and yet, they shake proudly … the flag of their country. Can this be possible? Yes, because all this is a big problem and the American taxpayer pays the price, "said Trump in a pair of tweets.
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Amy Guthrie, Associated Press Editor in Mexico contributed to this story.
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