Bypassing asylum in Mexico.
Just yards from the U.S. border, the Movimiento Juventud 2000 migrant shelter is typically filled with Mexicans deported from the United States. But in recent days, the modest single-story structure in Tijuana’s Zona Norte has been housing several dozen migrants fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.
“We’ll see what God says,” said Marisela Madrid, 29, of Choluma, Honduras, feeding a donut to her six-year-old son, Erik, shortly after arriving in Tijuana on Wednesday. Though exhausted after three days on a bus from Guadalajara, mother and child were preparing to leave early the next morning to the San Ysidro Port of Entry to ask for the U.S. government for asylum. “We hope they give us an opportunity.”
The migrants say they are members of the Pueblo Sin Fronteras Caravan, whose journey through Mexico in recent weeks has ignited the fury of President Donald Trump and drawn international attention.
Since launching on March 25 from the Mexican city of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border, the group has slowly been making its way across Mexico toward to the U.S. border. By Tuesday, the caravan is expected to reach its final destination,Tijuana — but it remains uncertain how many will be in the group.
In the early stages, the caravan’s number had grown to close to 2,000 participants, but by Wednesday had dwindled to about 600 — two-thirds of them women and children — as many peeled off on their own, said Irineo Mujica, a migrant advocate who is one of the group’s leaders.
Some members able to pay for bus fare — mostly women and children — went on ahead, and had already reached Tijuana last week. But the bulk of participants were riding the network of freight trains known as La Bestia, and on Thursday were in the port of Mazatlan in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa.
“We’re on the tracks of the train, and people are bringing us food,” Mujica said in a telephone interview. “This factor of Donald Trump has really made Mexicans come out and support the migrants.”
After meeting with legal advisers in the city of Puebla, some 200 caravan members are preparing to petition U.S. authorities for asylum, with another 100 or so “thinking about it,” Mujica said. The remainder are hoping to remain in Mexico with humanitarian visas promised by the Mexican government, he said.
For those who reach Tijuana, much uncertainty lies ahead.
A 41-year-old house painter from the Caribbean port city of La Ceiba in northern Honduras, José Luis Eucedio Martínez said he fled after seeing his nephew killed for failing to pay a “war tax” to gang members. After spending a year in Tapachula, he said he was able to obtain legal residency in Mexico, and arrived in Tijuana earlier this month — hesitant of his next step.
Eucedio said he watched on Tuesday afternoon as a group of 85 Central Americans — including the spouse of a family member — presented themselves at the San Ysidro Port of Entry’s PedWest entrance to ask for asylum on Tuesday. He said Mexican immigration agents offered to show them the way, but instead guided them toward buses, where they were detained and driven to an immigration facility.
At the Juventud 2000 shelter, a 35-year-old Salvadoran woman on Wednesday said that she and her ten-year-old daughter had walked on their own to the port of entry earlier that day, intending to ask for asylum. An agent from the Mexican migrant protection unit, Grupo Beta, said there would be no more appointments for the day, and “said we should return tomorrow to try again.”
Immigration attorney Nicole Ramos said that a group of 11 migrants preparing to seek asylum reported being detained by Mexican immigration authorities on Thursday who told them their travel documents had expired. They were driven to an immigration station, where an official reviewed their documents and determined they had not expired. They were returned to the port and allowed to proceed, she said.