Migrant camp in Mexico razed; lack of U.S. aid cited
REYNOSA, MEXICO — An open-air migrant encampment just south of the Texas border was razed early Tuesday morning, displacing hundreds of occupants, many of whom had traveled hundreds of miles and some of whom had waited a year to request asylum in the U.S.
By daybreak, migrants from Haiti, Honduras and other Central American countries were gone as armed soldiers with the Mexican National Guard patrolled the perimeter, and bulldozers and cleaning crews swept up tents, tarps and other survival gear in Reynosa’s Plaza de la República.
Migrants have found themselves stuck in Mexican border towns like Reynosa due to Title 42, the public health policy used to effectively shut the U.S. border during the pandemic.
Reynosa Mayor Carlos Víctor Peña Ortiz told The Chronicle that his government receives no funding from the United States to help provide shelter or meet the needs of the migrant community. The camp, which abutted the crossing on the Mexican side of the border with Hidalgo, Texas, has long been a cause of concern for local residents, he said.
“We are cleaning the plaza, obviously trying to make it as beautiful as possible as quickly as possible so that we can all return to normalcy here in Reynosa, and we can all be proud of our Plaza de la República,” the mayor said in Spanish during a morning press conference.
Ortiz said his government partnered with local charities and nongovernmental organizations to safely transport the displaced migrants on buses to the grounds of religious organization Senda de Vida, which has two large compounds in which they provide shelter and other services to migrants. One compound is currently empty but is being readied for the migrants.
“We built the new shelter with the help of Senda de Vida to give all migrants in Reynosa a more dignified life with better conditions for health and security,” Ortiz told reporters.
The mayor and a city official said the compound — covered in gravel and fenced in by cinder-block walls — is ready for occupancy.
A day earlier, the compound had no electricity, minimal restrooms and only a handful of tents. Ortiz told The Chronicle that each migrant would bring their own tent “that is being donated by the American NGOs.”
That wasn’t the message from every city official.
Eliacib Leija Pecina, coordinator of public services for the city of Reynosa, said the plaza encampment was demolished because local authorities want the migrants to live in better conditions.
“The migrants were not living in adequate conditions here,” he said in Spanish. “The reason they didn’t have time to take things is because there are going to be new tents, new mattresses and everything new. So they only had to take their clothes with them.”
The city estimated the plaza’s migrant population to be as high as 2,400, but a recent census count conducted by the Sidewalk School, an American NGO, estimated the number of people to be much smaller. Sidewalk School director Felicia Rangel-Samponaro told The Chronicle that there were 438 people residing in the camp on Sunday.
The rapid disassembling of the camp came as a shock to those in it, according to one migrant who only gave his first name. Nicolas said that around midnight, and without warning, women with babies, families and those sleeping in tents and under tarps had to gather their belongings and leave.
Nicolas said families were bused to the main compound of Senda de Vida while the rest had to walk. By the time he and his wife arrived around 1 a.m., there was no more space for them inside the compound.
“We were in the line, but because there were so many people, we
didn’t get in,” Nicolas said in Spanish.
He and his wife sat on a bench in the plaza close to where their tent used to be. The couple have been waiting in
Reynosa for four months, he said, having fled Haiti.
Shortly after touting the good intentions behind the camp’s razing, Ortiz appeared at Senda de Vida where he and its director, Pastor Hector Silva, shook hands in front of the waiting migrants and gathered media.
Silva quietly asked the mayor in Spanish, “Do you think you can lend a hand with a little food (for the migrants)?”
The mayor turned to The Chronicle and said, “You know what you should do, you should help us get food for this place.”