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Migrants streaming into Tijuana, but now face long stay

Published

6 years ago

7 minute read

TIJUANA, Mexico — Exhausted migrants in a caravan of Central American asylum-seekers napped on mattresses in a converted municipal gymnasium, while men played soccer and exchanged banter on a crowded, adjoining courtyard. A woman dabbed her crying, naked toddler with a moist cloth.

Nearly 2,000 caravan migrants had reached the U.S. border in Mexico’s northwestern corner by Thursday, with more coming in a steady trickle of buses. The city of Tijuana, with its privately run shelters operating well above their capacity of 700, opened the gymnasium and gated sport complex for up to 1,000 migrants, with a potential to expand to 3,000.

With U.S. border inspectors processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at the main border crossing with San Diego, prospects grew that migrants would be stuck waiting in Tijuana for months.

Francisco Rueda, the top deputy to Baja California state Gov. Francisco Vega de la Madrid, said about 1,750 migrants from the caravan had reached Tijuana so far.

“This is not a crisis,” he told reporters, though he agreed that “this is an extraordinary situation.”

Rueda said the state has 7,000 jobs available for its “Central American migrant brothers” who obtain legal residence status in Mexico.

“Today in Baja California there is an employment opportunity for those who request it, but it order for this to happen, it has to regulate migrant status,” he said.

The city’s thriving factories are always looking for workers, and several thousand Haitian migrants who were turned away at the U.S. border have found jobs and settled in Tijuana the last two years.

Police made their presence known in a city that is suffering an all-time-high homicide rate. A group of about 50 migrants, mostly women and children, walked through downtown streets Thursday from the city shelter to a breakfast hall under police escort.

As buses from western and central Mexico trickled in, some families camped inside the bus terminal and waited for word on where they could find a safe place to sleep.

Oscar Zapata, 31, reached the Tijuana bus station at 2 a.m. Thursday from Guadalajara with his wife and their three children, ages 4, 5 and 12, and headed to the breakfast hall, where migrants were served free beef and potatoes.

Back home in La Ceiba, Honduras, he sold pirated CDs and DVDs in the street and two gangs demanding “protection” money threatened to kidnap his daughter and force her into prostitution if he didn’t pay. When he heard about the caravan on the TV news last month, he didn’t think twice.

“It was the opportunity to get out,” Zapata said.

Zapata said he hopes to join a brother in Los Angeles but has not yet decided on his next move. Like many others, he plans to wait in Tijuana for others in the caravan to arrive and gather more information before seeking asylum in the United States.

Byron Jose Blandino, a 27-year-old bricklayer from Nicaragua who slept in the converted gymnasium, said he wanted to request asylum but not until he could speak with someone well-versed in U.S. law and asylum procedures.

“The first thing is to wait,” Blandino said. “I do not want to break the laws of any country. If I could enter in a peaceful manner, that would be good.

To claim asylum in San Diego, migrants enter their names in a tattered notebook held together by duct tape and managed by the migrants in a plaza outside the entry to the main border crossing. On Thursday, migrants who registered six weeks ago were getting their names called. The waiting list has grown to more than 3,000 names and stands to become much longer with the new arrivals.

Dozens of gay and transgender migrants in the caravan were already lining up Thursday to submit asylum claims, though it was unclear how soon they would be able to do so.

Rueda, the governor’s deputy, said that if all migrants from the caravan currently in Tijuana were to register to seek asylum in the U.S., they would likely have to wait four months at current processing rates. For that reason, the state has asked Mexican federal authorities to encourage people in other caravans to go to other border cities.

There are real questions about how the city of more than 1.6 million will manage to handle the migrant caravans working their way through Mexico, which may total 10,000 people in all.

“No city in the world is prepared to receive this number of migrants,” said Mario Osuna, Tijuana’s social development director. He said the city hopes Mexico’s federal government “will start legalizing these people immediately” so they can get jobs and earn a living.

The caravan has fragmented somewhat in recent days in a final push to the border, with some migrants moving rapidly in buses and others falling behind.

On Thursday, hundreds were stranded for most of the day at a gas station in Navojoa, some 750 miles (1,200 kilometres) from Tijuana.

“We were dropped here at midnight … in the middle of nowhere, where supposedly some buses were going to come pick us up, but nothing,” Alejandra Grisel Rodriguez of Honduras told The Associated Press by phone. “We are without water, without food.”

After about 12 hours, seven buses began arriving to collect the migrants, Rodriguez said, but they quickly filled up.

“We would need at least 40 or 50,” she said.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Verza in Culiacan, Mexico, contributed to this report.

Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press





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Border Patrol Agent Lashes Out At Biden-Harris Admin, Calling Job ‘Migrant Concierge Service’ Amid Border Crisis

Published on September 14, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Mariane Angela

The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies.

A Border Patrol agent criticized the recent changes in his role under the Biden-Harris administration, condemning it as transforming into a “migrant concierge service,” according to The New York Post Friday.

Zachary Apotheker, who joined the force in 2020, voiced his frustration over the shift in his duties under the Biden administration from intercepting drug traffickers and apprehending illegal entrants to what he now sees as aiding migrant entry, in an interview with the NYP. Apotheker highlighted concerns about security and vetting under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that over 8 million migrants have crossed the southern border since January 2021, including members of the Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua.

“I don’t want to bring people into the country. That’s not what I signed up to do,” Apotheker told NYP. Apotheker’s distress is further compounded by over 1.7 million illegal migrants who have evaded capture since Jan. 2021, as he shared encounters with victims of migrant-committed crimes, naming individuals and emphasizing the personal toll on him.

“I’m an apolitical person and I just want to do my job and protect this country,” the agent said, the NYP reported. “When I see people from another country coming here, getting resources beyond what the American citizen can get, that’s where I have to draw the line. And then they’re going out and committing crimes and we’re still not removing them and American citizens are being killed, women are being raped.”

Apotheker and multiple Border Patrol sources have raised concerns to the NYP about the inadequate documentation for unaccompanied migrant children under 14, including missing biometric data, complicating their safe relocation to families or sponsors in the U.S. He highlighted a backlog in the immigration system, noting that 291,000 migrant children have been released in the U.S. without court dates, with an additional 32,000 failing to appear for their scheduled hearings.

The border agent stated he is prepared to risk his career to bring attention to what he views as grave mismanagement and potential dangers posed by current border policies. “However bad you think it is now, it’s only going to be worse,” he warned.

The White House and Border Patrol did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Rumored deal with Bloc Quebec party could keep Trudeau Liberals in power, stave off election

Published on September 10, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country”

The possibility of an early Canadian election may not come to fruition after Bloc Québécois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet hinted that an alliance between the separatist party and the Liberals under Justin Trudeau could become a reality.

Rumors began to swirl that a Bloc-Liberal deal could happen after Bloc House leader Alain Therrien said Sunday that the party’s “objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier.”

“We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that’s for sure,” he said, as reported by the Canadian Press.

Therrien made the comments in light of the possibility of a federal election taking place before fall 2025 after New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh pulled his official support for Trudeau’s Liberals last week.

Late last month, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre called on Singh to pull his support for Trudeau’s Liberals so that an election could be held.

Therrien also noted that the NDP pulling its support of the Trudeau Liberals has created a “window of opportunity” that his party may exploit. The Canadian Press reported that a person close to the Bloc party said directly that the NDP had in essence handed the party the balance of power.

As it stands now, the Bloc has 32 seats to the NDP’s 24, which is more than enough to prop up the Liberals, who have 154 seats.

As for Blanchet, he told the media on Monday that he was feeling “good” about his party’s newfound power. He then took a shot at Poilievre, saying he is more or less like Trudeau. “There are plenty of issues on which (Poilievre’s) in the same position as Justin Trudeau,” Blanchet said.

“Show us that you’re different, Justin Trudeau, apart from being against abortion, then we’ll see what you have to offer,” he said.

While most Conservative MPs are pro-life, Poilievre supports abortion and has a poor track record when it comes to life and family issues, with Campaign Life Coalition having given him a “red light” rating.

News of a possible Bloc-Liberal deal to keep Trudeau in power drew the immediate ire of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

“The federal government does not have a mandate to bargain with Quebec separatists at the expense of Alberta, the West and the rest of the country,” she wrote Monday on X. “If the Liberals go down this path, we need an election to be called immediately.”

On Tuesday, Blanchet responded to Smith’s comments to reporters by saying he found her remarks “funny,” adding that “Canadians are suddenly very interested in us.”

As for Trudeau, his woes continue to mount. LifeSiteNews recently reported how national elections campaign director for Canada’s federal Liberal Party announced he was stepping down because, according to sources close to the party, he does not think Trudeau can win a fourth consecutive election.

Recent polls show that the Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority government in a landslide in an election held today. Singh’s NDP and Trudeau’s Liberals would lose a massive number of seats.

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