Migrants fill Tijuana shelters in Mexico

Meet local resistance as numbers keep growing

TIJUANA, Mexico — Members of a migrant caravan started to meet some local resistance as they continued to arrive by the hundreds in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, where a group of residents clashed with migrants camped out by the U.S. border fence.

About 100 migrants declined offers of rides to shelters and had camped out late Wednesday by the steel border fence at Tijuana’s beach area, when a similar number of local residents marched up to the group shouting, “You’re not welcome,” and, “Get out!” Police kept the two sides apart. Vladimir Cruz, a migrant from El Salvador, said Thursday, “These people are the racists, because 95 percent of people here support us.”

“It is just this little group that doesn’t support us,” Cruz said. “They are uncomfortable because we’re here.”

Playas de Tijuana, as the area is known, is an upper-middle-class enclave, and residents appeared worried about crime and sanitation. One protester shouted, “This isn’t about discrimination. It is about safety!”

There are real questions about how the city of Tijuana will manage to handle the migrant caravans working their way up through Mexico, and which may contain 10,000 people in all.

“No city in the world is prepared to receive this number of migrants,” said Mario Osuna, the Tijuana city social development director. He said the city hopes the federal government “will start legalizing these people immediately” so they could get jobs and earn a living in Tijuana.

The migrants, who slept in overcrowded shelters and in tents with a view of armed U.S. Border Patrol agents, said they will wait for other migrants to join them before making their next moves.

Hundreds of migrants have arrived by bus in Tijuana since Tuesday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited U.S. troops posted at the border in Texas and said the deployment of military personnel ordered by President Donald Trump provides good training for war, despite criticism that the effort is a waste of taxpayer money and a political stunt. Most of the troops are in

Texas, more than 1,500 miles from where the caravan is arriving.

Gregory Bull The Associated Press Marvin Ochoa, center, of Honduras, waits in line for a meal behind his wife, Diana Marylin Ochoa, after they arrived with a Central America migrant caravan Thursday in Tijuana, Mexico.