Francoise was lucky to find a space available in a migrant shelter in Tijuana. The first days he spent in the city, last week, he had to sleep on a fence where to reduce the cold he placed cardboard boxes.
“The government brought me to El Hongo (some 25 miles east of Tijuana, near Tecate) and there they gave me a humanitarian permit, “he explained. But the town of El Hongo at the foot of La Rumorosa was too cold for him.
He had left Haiti to live in Brazil for a while, but “there is no work at all; it is difficult to survive as an immigrant in Brazil ”. So, like many of his countrymen, he decided to travel a dozen countries from Brazil to Mexico.
“I spent months in Tapachula. They wouldn’t let us go out, but now the government took us out on buses and gives us permits to be in the country, “said Francoise.
Pastor Gustavo Banda, director of the Temple Caballeros de Jesús shelter, where is Little Haiti, he told the Opinion that Francoise is just one of more than a thousand Haitian migrants who arrived in Tijuana last week.
“Apparently a new wave of Haitian migrants is coming, and this time they come with documents ”such as the humanitarian permit, and each one with its Unique Population Registry Code (CURP), said the pastor.
Another director of a migrant shelter, Raúl López from Returning to the Homeland, told the Opinion that with these documents they can get the others they need, their Federal Register of Causers to pay taxes and their affiliation to Social Security, to obtain benefits.
“They do not come as the wave of Haitians that arrived in the 2016 ”when approximately 22, 000 migrants d e Haiti arrived in Tijuana, “now they come more protected with their documents,” said López Hernández.
But now the problem may be that around 1, 500 migrants in two weeks and with the waves of Central American migrants and Mexicans fleeing the war between the cartels of Michoacán and Guerrero, the shelters in Tijuana are now saturated.
And all those who have arrived, are just the beginning of a wave that is expected to be of several thousand people.
“Many come, I would say like 50, 000. Not all of them go to Tijuana but they come to the border ”of Mexico with the United States, said Francoise, who has spoken with Haitians who have left Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, part of a diaspora that originated with an earthquake that devastated Haiti in the 2010.
But the outpost that has arrived so far is already facing the problem of the shortage of shelters or shelters.
“We had to tell about a hundred Haitians that unfortunately we no longer have a place,” said Pastor Banda. Her shelter now has more than 1, 000 people, almost all from families with minors.
Delia Herrada , director of the Jesus Christ Vive shelter, which only shelters Haitian migrants, explained that “we are full; Maybe it could include a couple more men alone, but what worries me the most is that we no longer have room for families, they stay on the street with small children ”, he said.
In the shelter Youth 2000, the director José María García reported that although the shelter was full, he cleared an area to house some 20 people, only Haitian families. “With those who come later, the truth is I don’t know what the shelters are going to do,” he exclaimed.
At the Agape shelter, with some 300 migrants, the director, Pastor Albert Rivera, said this Sunday that the situation of the wave of Haitian migrants could worsen.
Hondurans arriving, who were waiting for their visitor permits in Tapachula for more than a year. In the last two weeks they were Haitian immigrants; now they are beginning to arrive from Honduras ”, explained the pastor.
The Tijuana municipal government set up an auditorium in a sports center, where it has hosted about 70 Haitian migrants, but many others roam the city center or areas where there are shelters awaiting availability.
The director of the Casa del Migrante, Father Patrick Murphy, warned a week ago that the initial wave of Haitian migrants is unprotected with no place to take refuge.
“We are full and out of the Some . He believed that it is time for the government to help grant refuge.