Members of the caravan

of Central American migrants headed for the U.S. border leave Mexicali, Mexico, on Tuesday for the border city of Tijuana, where officials said they have arrested 34 migrants on minor offenses and turned them over for deportation.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Officials in the Mexican border city of Tijuana said they have arrested 34 members of the caravan of Central Americans for minor offenses and turned them over for deportation.

A Tijuana city statement late Monday said the 34 — apparently all men — were arrested for drug possession, public intoxication, disturbing the peace and resisting police, and added they would be deported to their home countries. The main caravan has between 4,000 and 6,000 participants, so those arrested represent less than 1 percent of the total.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has made a point of saying the city is not comfortable with the influx that began arriving last week, and he compared the Central American group unfavorably with about 3,000 Haitians who ended up in the city bordering San Diego on a failed bid to reach the United States last year.

“The Haitians arrived with their papers, with a clear vision,” Gastelum said in an interview posted on the city’s Facebook page. They came “in an orderly way, they never asked us for food or shelter,” renting apartments and making their own food. He said the Haitians found jobs and “inserted themselves in the city’s economy” and had not been involved in any disturbances.

The Mexican government gave the Haitians temporary transit permits, and after they failed in attempts to enter the United States, many have since applied for Mexican residency. The majority in the Central American caravan have refused Mexico’s repeated offers of residency or asylum, and vowed to cross the border.

The caravan of Central Americans, he said “had arrived all of sudden, with a lot of people — not all … but a lot — were aggressive and cocky.”

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, who have portrayed the caravans as a threat to the United States, have said there were as many as 500 criminals in the groups heading northward, but they haven’t said what the crimes were and said they could not reveal the source of the number because they were protecting intelligence sources.

Meanwhile, a temporary shelter for families recently opened in San Diego. The San Diego Rapid Response Network opened the shelter in response to the federal government’s decision to end a program that helped asylum-seeking families get to their final destinations in the U.S. after they crossed the border.

The temporary shelter can hold about 150 people. Its main dormitory has about 70 green cots, and several other rooms in the building have cots stacked in the corners to convert into sleeping spaces at night. A few cribs are scattered throughout.

Separately, nearly 6,000 U.S. troops rushed to the border with Mexico shortly before the midterm election could begin withdrawing this week, but some administration officials are worried about curtailing the mission too quickly. Information for this article was contributed by Julie Watson, Mark Stevenson, Robert Burns and Colleen Long of The Associated Press; by David S. Cloud of the Los Angeles Times; and by Kate Morrissey of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

AP/RODRIGO ABD