Eleven-year-old Melissa sits in a yellow schoolhouse on the outskirts of Tijuana, joining the chorus of voices answering a teacher who instructs the class on long division.
While dividing 5,789 by 3 might be tedious for some, Melissa says she’s thrilled to crunch numbers. It’s been almost six months since she and her family fled home – and her studies – in the western Mexican state of Michoacán due to violent threats and relentless extortion.
Her family has been languishing in a migrant shelter, waiting to get an appointment with United States officials to request asylum – a disheartening reality for millions of migrants in northern Mexican border cities over the past three years, since the U.S. issued Title 42. But the shelter pivoted to address this growing need, opening the school, and making this limbo just a little easier on kids like Melissa.
Why We Wrote This
Mexico was never a “migration nation” like the U.S. But American policy written during the pandemic has caused a bottleneck at the border – and forced Mexicans to rethink their obligations to migrants.
“I’m learning again,” she says, grinning.
The new school at the Embajadores de Jesús migrant shelter exemplifies the ways in which Mexican civil society has adapted to increased migrant flows amid Title 42, which virtually sealed off U.S. ports of entry to noncitizens or visa holders and put a traditionally transient population in a holding pattern. Ever since, Mexicans have leaned into flexibility to face the changing populations in their towns and cities and had to rethink the rights of migrants – and their role towards and obligations to them – in ways that will likely outlast Title 42 when it expires May 11.
Throughout all the change in Mexico wrought by U.S. policy, one thing is clear, says Pat Murphy, who directs the Casa del Migrante, another Tijuana shelter: “Our ability to adapt to new realities that come our way always astounds me.”
Migration confusion
Since March 2020, the U.S. has used its authority under the public health law known as Title 42 to rapidly expel migrants and suspend their right to seek asylum. U.S Customs and Border Protection carried out more than 2.8 million expulsions of migrants under it. However, those encounters are not equivalent to unique individuals, who at times have tried to cross more than once.
The rule, implemented by the Trump administration, was enacted as a means of containing the spread of COVID-19. But it quickly transformed into a tool for controlling migration. It has faced legal challenges but has stood until now. The official U.S. end to the public health emergency, including Title 42, is set for May 11.
The policy sowed confusion for migrants, advocates, and lawyers, and the lifting of it will create new questions. Shelters like Casa del Migrante have already reported seeing more migrants arriving in Tijuana as the law’s expiration nears, some erroneously believing that the U.S. asylum system will end May 11.
At the same time, new processes are coming into place. The U.S. debuted a phone application in January for scheduling appointments with U.S. officials (CBP One) that has confounded many migrants, and President Joe Biden announced the opening of regional centers in Central and South America to process asylum claims, which could create new pressures in those countries – as it has in Mexico.
One of the biggest challenges for Mexico with Title 42 has come down to simple volume. Migrant centers, used to a more transient population, have been saturated beyond capacity, causing temporary tent cities to emerge – even in Mexico City. This spring an informal camp of asylum-seekers grew in a plaza in a trendy, touristy neighborhood of the capital. That’s caused some tensions, but also led locals to new solutions.
Change in an instant
Along the border in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Damaris Hernández remembers her shock last fall as she watched the first encampment of migrants in her memory grow on the banks of the Rio Grande.
Alicia Fernández/Special to the Christian Science Monitor
As temperatures fell toward freezing, she was sitting in a meeting with other pastors planning their foundation’s annual holiday events, when the conversation turned toward the informal camp. One of the pastors mentioned his great-grandparents had constructed a building not far from the growing tent city that was sitting uninhabited.
A plan emerged to install some showers and toilets in the building, which migrants staying at the camp could walk a few blocks to use. But within days the tents were torn down and migrants evicted, and Ms. Hernández says the team simply took their initial plan to the next level, turning the building into a makeshift shelter known as the Hope Center. “Living in a border city, you know everything can change in an instant,” she says.
They painted the walls muted pinks and yellows, made a list of house rules, and offered up simple bedrolls and some warm meals. Women and children sleep upstairs, families are in the kitchen, and single men sleep in the entry hall. The center has been full beyond its capacity of 100 people ever since.
Elsewhere in the city, migrants have found their own solutions. Manuel Alejandro and his younger brother arrived six months ago, fleeing a crushing economic and political situation back home in Venezuela.
With shelters full and room rentals out of their budget, they got a tip: look for abandoned buildings.
Following years of brutal cartel violence and poor city planning, Ciudad Juárez has a glut of abandoned housing – more than 70,500 buildings, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. Across the sprawling city, migrants are squatting in these dilapidated former homes and businesses, waiting for their chance to get an appointment through the CBP One app – or for U.S. border policies to change.
About 30 minutes by foot from Juárez’s historic center, the young men found a roof under which to sleep, but the walls are crumbling in and there are no windows or doors. “I was nervous to come in, but it was better than sleeping on the street,” says the young man in his late 20s.
They’ve also been shown solidarity on the part of locals. The 14 Venezuelans now staying here, mostly young men and a few women, have met the owner and regularly interact with neighbors, who come by with food or water. One neighbor helped them dig a hole for an improvised outhouse in the front yard.
“I’ve met so many people in Mexico with giving hearts,” says Gabriel Inserry, another Venezuelan staying here. “But why is the U.S. trying to make our situation a ‘mission impossible?’ There has to be another solution than sitting in an abandoned home and surviving.”
For Alivei, a local teenager who lives across the street, not helping her new, temporary neighbors doesn’t feel like an option, although her mother doesn’t approve.
“They’re good people. I see them around and I hear their stories and I can’t help but want to help,” she says of sneaking the Venezuelans food, water, or blankets when her mom isn’t home. “They’re my friends.”
A migrant disaster
The influx of migrants across Mexico and the shortage of housing and services has meant opportunity for cartels and other criminals, from sex traffickers to human traffickers, to exploit them, says Melisa Viruete, who runs the legal clinic at the Espacio Migrante shelter and resource center in Tijuana.
Whitney Eulich
The increasingly visible population of migrants in Juárez has also led to stricter enforcement of Mexican immigration controls in February and March, says Joseph Herreros, associate protection representative at the United Nations’ refugee agency in Mexico. Raids on migrants begging at city intersections or sleeping on the streets then led to an uptick in detentions, legal in Mexico if the migrant is in the country without necessary paperwork.
Eric, a young father from Venezuela, was caught up in one of those raids – and he almost became a victim of one of the worst migrant disasters in Mexico since Title 42.
He and his family of four were detained by Mexican immigration officers on March 27 while selling candy at a stoplight in Juárez, and were released that night. Not long after, around 10pm, a fire tore through the immigration detention center, killing 40 migrants – including three of Eric’s good friends. Surveillance video shows no agents attempted to free the migrants, who are shown kicking and pulling on the cell door, trying to get out.
Eric helped set up a vigil for his friends outside the detention center, with posters that read “40 sacrificed for the dream of thousands of people.” He says he was violently harassed by Mexican officials while camping out by that vigil, which spooked him so much that he turned himself into U.S. border agents in search of asylum. Instead, the family was expelled to Tijuana under Title 42.
“I always thought if you did things correctly, it would work out,” he says of his family’s search for protection, currently at a shelter in Tijuana. “At this point, I’d rather die fighting for justice in Mexico than waiting for something to change back home.”
“This is a stain on our country. People should be able to turn to an immigration officer, a security officer for help,” not die at their hands, says José María García Lara, who runs the Tijuana shelter Movimiento Juventud 2000.
In January this year, Mexico received roughly 13,000 applications for asylum – more than double the number the same month in 2022, according to Mexico’s refugee assistance agency. Mexico has progressive asylum laws, says Mr. Herreros from the U.N., but “there are no legal pathways or alternatives for migrants who aren’t refugees,” he says. It’s “overwhelming the asylum system.”
The government has pledged to reform the agency that controls migration inside Mexico, the National Immigration Institute. One prominent immigration-rights advocate has called for the agency’s abolishment, recommending that it be replaced with a new government entity led by those with direct experience aiding migrants in civil society.
Their call is part of a shifting mindset towards migration that may be less impermanent than Mexico is historically accustomed to.
This is apparent in the transformation of the Embajadores de Jesús shelter over the past several years, a one-time church-turned-dormitory for migrants that has become its own community. Today, with support from partners like the University of California San Diego’s Center on Global Justice, it consists of multistory modern structures, an outdoor kitchen, event space, and plans for vital services like a 24-hour health clinic, slated to open in September. Last month, the shelter inaugurated the school, which is recognized by Mexico’s secretariat of education, where Melissa is happily working through math problems.
Antonio Sánchez says it was a blessing to return to teaching more than a year after he fled his home in central Mexico due to extortion and the kidnapping of one of his sons. He was a primary school teacher for 26 years before giving everything up for his family’s safety, and he sees a shift in the kids here since starting school: “They have purpose, they’re united.”
Like most at the shelter, he’s biding his time until he secures an appointment with U.S. border patrol to make his family’s asylum claim. “We all have to wait. Longer than most of us ever expected. But, this,” he says, gesturing out the window at the basketball court and the shelter’s vast, growing infrastructure, “this is for people to learn and not fall too far behind while they wait.”