There are approximately 22,000 migrants sleeping in shelters, on the streets and in makeshift camps in three cities in northern Mexico, city officials and migrant advocates told CNN.
That number is expected to rise as Title 42, a pandemic-era law that allows US border agents to immediately turn away immigrants who cross the southern border illegally, in the name of preventing covid-19 , remains in legal limbo. Meanwhile, thousands of migrants heading to border cities are deciding to wait out the Trump-era pandemic policy or cross into the United States illegally.
There are approximately 9,000 migrants living in shelters, houses and in other areas of Tijuana, Mexico, near San Diego, California, according to Enrique Lucero, Tijuana’s director of immigration affairs. Approximately 60% of the migrants in Tijuana are Mexicans displaced from the states of Michoacán, Guerrero, Veracruz and Oaxaca. Meanwhile, the remaining 40% are from Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela, according to Lucero.
About 8,000 migrants are in Reynosa, Mexico, according to Pastor Hector Silva, who runs prominent shelters in the area, and about 5,000 migrants are staying in Matamoros, Glady Edith Cañas, who runs Ayudandoles a Triunfar, a nonprofit organization, told CNN. profit in that city. Reynosa and Matamoros are located across the border from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.
Most of the migrants in Matamoros are from Venezuela, but there are also migrants from Colombia, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador and other parts of Mexico, Cañas said, adding that the number of migrants in that city increased from about 2,000 to about 5,000 over the past week.