Shelters From Reynosa to Tijuana Are at Capacity and Scrambling for Resources as the U.S. Continues to Expel Migrants – By Jasmine Aguilera (TIME) / May 20 2021
It’s bustling and noisy inside Iglesia Embajadores de Jesus (Ambassadors of Jesus Church) on a Saturday in late April. Nestled in the remote hills of Tijuana, migrants who are mostly from Central America have been able to find shelter here, sleeping on gray and blue mats laid out on the floor where church service usually takes place. Dozens of small children stay close to their parents. Some of them play outdoors with construction rubble. Many people are missing their shoelaces.
This is one of the more resourced shelters, says Erika Pinheiro, policy and litigation director at Al Otro Lado, a legal and humanitarian aid organization who hosts seminars at the shelter to explain U.S. immigration policy. While there are several shelters throughout Tijuana with nicer amenities, there are even more with less than Embajadores. Some are just concrete walls with tents pitched inside. At Embajadores, they have electricity and running water.
Along the nearly 2,000-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, shelters like this are at capacity and scrambling for resources. In Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, the San Juan Apóstol shelter for vulnerable and pregnant migrant women now has hundreds of people on a waitlist. In Reynosa, across the border form McAllen, Texas, a makeshift encampment has formed in downtown and grown to about 700 people because shelters have run out of room. As a result, a nonprofit that provides education for migrant children stranded in Mexico called The Sidewalk School has started to house 26 families and two single adult men in apartments. Many organizations and local church leaders in Mexican border cities have partnered to shelter whomever they can, sometimes with aid from American organizations like Al Otro Lado.
CONTINUE > https://time.com/6012808/us-expel-migrants-mexico-shelters/
