(Photo Credit: Jonathan Pedneault/HRW)
Mexican authorities have moved thousands of migrants from a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, to a new facility farther away from the U.S.-Mexico border.
Leticia Guzman works with a nonprofit called Border Angels and has traveled between California and Mexico to bring the migrants donations. The migrants are part of a large caravan that traveled to Tijuana from Central America.
Listen to Leticia describe the conditions in the now closed Benito Juarez shelter.
This weekend Guzman was at the old shelter, located in Tijuana’s Benito Juarez stadium, and said there were still some migrants inside. She said Mexican police kept people from entering with donations.
A sign says the Benito Juarez shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, is closed. (Photo: Jonathan Pedneault/HRW) Migrants at the Benito Juarez shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo: Leticia Guzman/Border Angels) Migrants at the Benito Juarez shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo: Leticia Guzman/Border Angels) A girl at the Benito Juarez shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo: Leticia Guzman/Border Angels)
“They stopped me,” Guzman said of the police. “They didn’t let me go inside. They said, ‘We are no longer taking donations for people.’”
Guzman said hundreds of people were still sleeping outside the old shelter. She worried that the new shelter, called El Barretal and located about 11 miles away, may be “dangerous.”
“It is in a pretty rural area,” she explained. Migrants “don’t know how to make their way around there, they don’t know who’s on their side, who’s not on their side.”