With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office in just over a week and promising mass deportations, the city of Tijuana has plans to open a shelter with enough capacity to house 10,000 deportees.
Tijuana Mayor Ismael Burgueño said during his morning press conference Thursday that the shelter could be expanded to accommodate 30,000 people if necessary.
“We want to give deportees the best possible space available,” he said in Spanish.
Burgueño envisions a dignified space where people can have access to social services and health care to deal with the trauma of deportation. He also said the shelter will connect deportees to local job opportunities in the city’s maquiladora industry.
He said there are currently more than 14,000 job vacancies in Tijuana’s manufacturing industry.
Burgueño’s overall goal is to ensure any mass deportations wouldn’t lead to street encampments like the ones that sprung up in the city during the migrant caravan of 2018 or the post-pandemic migration surge in 2021 and 2022.
In both instances, Tijuana residents organized protests against encampments and blamed them on local officials. In 2022, Tijuana’s former mayor called Mexico’s National Guard to clear the encampment.
“Public spaces should not be used to house migrants,” Burgueño said.
Officials plan to unveil the exact location of the shelter Saturday, but have yet to say when it will open.
Tijuana would run and operate the shelter in coordination with the Mexican federal government and the state of Baja California.
