TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and said Friday that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived.
Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum said that the Mexican federal government has provided little assistance and he is not going to commit the city’s public resources to dealing with the situation. He said 4,976 migrants had come to the city.
“We don’t have sufficient and necessary infrastructure to adequately attend to these people, to give them a decent space,” he said on Grupo Formula radio.
On Thursday, his government issued a statement saying that it was requesting help from the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“I am not going to spend the money of Tijuana (citizens),” Gasteulum said in the statement.
For the most part, the migrant caravan that left Honduras in mid-October was well received by the towns it passed through along the way to the border. Even cities with few resources made sure the migrants had food and a place to rest.
But in those places, the caravan stayed at most two nights — with the exception of Mexico City. In Tijuana, many of the migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty want to request asylum in the United States and face the prospect of spending months in the border city before they have the opportunity to speak with a U.S. official.
Gastelum said Friday that the Mexican government has talked about sending 20 tons of resources to Tijuana to help but that three-fourths consisted of materials to reinforce the border and only 5 tons were materials to actually help the migrants.
Most of the migrants are staying at a makeshift shelter at a sports stadium in the city. They are receiving support from local churches and private citizens who have been providing food, as well as various agencies of the Baja California state government, which says it identified 7,000 job openings for those who qualify.
Gastelum also criticized the federal government for not taking more seriously U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat Thursday to shut down the entire border if things get out of control in Tijuana.
“That’s serious,” he said.
Referring to a protest by a small group of migrants who marched to a border crossing Thursday, Gastelum said such demonstrations are not going to help.
“Thousands of people from Tijuana work in the United States, they arrive late to their jobs,” he said. “From the United States the tourism isn’t coming here. The people aren’t coming to the medical sector. The situation is becoming uncomfortable.”
Because of climate change and our inaction, the problem of refugees is going to be more pervasive and intractable worldwide. Globally, if we don’t get a handle on this, it’s going to lead to even worse humanitarian crises, violence, starvation, and probably war, and yet, it would appear domestic politics in various countries is preventing any clear-headed solutions from forming. We’re sitting on a powder keg.
What’s wrong with this picture? The Mexican government is being both foolish and asinine to essentially reinforce Toadglans’ draconian policies.
The loss of revenue to the medical sector alone is going to devastate Baja’s economy. Combined with the closing of the border (as another political stunt) this is going to quickly add up to billions of dollars in lost economic activity.
Fun Fact: The U.S. has been closing the crossing at San Ysidro. But lo and behold, the crossing at the Otay Mesa, which consists largely of commercial truck traffic, has been business as usual. Why? Because Americans want their cheap produce to arrive unfettered by political flimflammery.
Close the Otay crossing and every grocery store and produce importer from California to North Dakota will be up in arms.
We can easily afford to help the poor.
It’s the rich who’ll bankrupt us.
Because that money belongs to the mayor and the Federales.
This is just the Republicanization of Tijuana.
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.” - “Babs” Bush, September 5, 2005