Photo: Manuel Ocaño / Impremedia
Catholic priests and civil organizations deploy a humanitarian bridge between the mountains of the state of Michoacán and California, to assist about 1, 500 Michoacan families that every month have to flee the violence and arrive in Tijuana in search of asylum in the United States.
The “ Father Goyo, ”Gregorio López Gerónimo, from Apatzingán, told Real America News when he inaugurated a shelter for Michoacan families in Tijuana that organized crime prevails throughout the state of Michoacán, but is particularly cruel in the vicinity of the town of Aguililla.
The fleeing families arrive at various points on the Mexican border with the United States, but most of them seek the border with California because it is the state that has the largest community of Michoacan immigrants, said the father.
The humanitarian bridge goes from Aguilillas and its surroundings in the mountains, and Apatzingán, to Tijuana, and from here to the counties of San Bernardino and Fresno.
The priest said that it is a necessary mechanism, because “as so many families flee from the violence in Michoacán, many end up falling into the hands of other criminal groups, coyotes and drug traffickers who kidnap, steal, murder, rape. ”
A representative of Michoacan organizations in southern California explained anonymously that the humanitarian bridge was decided urgently when they learned that criminals from Michoacán had come to Tijuana in search of families who fled the violence.
In response, with the help of organizations on both sides of the border, the father inaugurated the shelter in the parish of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in the La Rinconada neighborhood in Tijuana.
The F’s Michoacan amilias who arrive at the place, almost all with minor children, find in the shelter accommodation, a food bank, a medical dispensary, and a place where families began to have legal advice this Sunday from the organization Al Otro Lado, that operates on both sides of the border.
Soraya Vázquez, the deputy director of Al Otro Lado, explained to Real America News that what the volunteers and lawyers do in legal support sessions is to help Michoacan families fill out a document called a “risk survey.”
Based on In the results of the risk survey, the legal team determines the type of program for which each family qualifies to request to cross the border on humanitarian parole, while requesting asylum.
“We have detected that many of the families that arrive in Tijuana (in search of asylum) come from Michoacán, all flee from structural violence, and whatWe do is help them fill out their humanitarian permit applications and then we physically accompany them to the entrance to the gatehouse ”when it is their appointment to cross, said the lawyer.
Meanwhile, attorneys explain to families what will happen when they appear before Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and once they cross the border.
The lawyer Vázquez emphasized that Al Otro Lado does the field work, directly serving migrants and their families, but it does so as part of a coalition of more than one hundred organizations, the majority of them in California, united in a Welcome Task Force.
Father Goyo said that since he began advising and accompanying Al Otro On the other hand, “more than one hundred Michoacan families have already crossed.”
The legal group can do this work because it has the support of numerous volunteers.
“Actually we have results of more than seven thousand risk surveys, apart from hundreds of families that we have supported ”since the administration of President Joe Biden allows asylum seekers to cross the border to manage, according to the lawyer.
Without going into details, a young man from Michoacán whose family benefited from the humanitarian bridge, said that when crossing to San Diego, once they left the sentry box, they They took them on a bus to a hotel, where they were tested for COVID 19.
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“Those who are negative, almost all are negative, they already communicate with the people who are going to sponsor them in the United States to come and pick us up or they send us to the cities where the sponsors; in my case, they sent us with my family to Fresno ”, he spoke.
From now on, the young man has a one-year permit to be in the country, get a lawyer and present your asylum case in court.