For Haitian migrants, waiting in Tijuana brings fear, danger
TIJUANA, Mexico — In the last phone conversation that Pethou Archange had with her younger brother, he told her that he had a surprise for her birthday.
The next day, Archange, 41, received a call that her brother had died in Tijuana, becoming the latest in the city’s Haitian community to make headlines for a death that might have been prevented but for the overlapping effects of U.S. border policies and systemic racism in Mexico.
The nonprofit Haitian Bridge Alliance, with offices in San Diego and Tijuana, has helped cover the costs of 12 funerals for such deaths since December, according to Vivianne Petit-frère, a community liaison with the organization based south of the border who is herself a migrant trying to reach the United States.
Those deaths, Petit-frère said, are usually either caused by violent attacks during a robbery or rejection by hospitals and clinics when Haitians attempt to seek medical care. It is often a combination of the two.
“It’s not just in Tijuana. It’s in all of Mexico,” Petitfrère said in the Spanish she’s learned since coming to Mexico. “I can say it’s a systemic racism. At every level of social life, Haitians face danger.”
According to Archange, her brother, 31-year-old Calory Archange, was among those whose death could have likely been prevented by proper medical care. He started feeling chest pain while he was in Tapachula, a city near the Mexico-Guatemala border where migrants often get stuck for months on their journeys north. But, even after he reached Tijuana, he was never able to find a doctor willing to see him about it.
“Migrants don’t have a right to medical care. They don’t have a right to anything,” Archange said in Spanish, which she learned living in the Dominican Republic and Chile. “They’re discriminated against a lot here in Tijuana.”
Her brother’s funeral in early June was joined with that of fellow Haitian Jocelyn Anselme, who was beaten and robbed while walking home. He died a few days later after being turned away from a Tijuana hospital, according to Haitian Bridge Alliance.
While the U.S. at this year’s Summit of the Americas promised to take in more Haitian refugees, those statements don’t mean much for the reality of those who are already waiting at the United States border to be let in.
News of the two recent deaths has spread throughout Tijuana’s Haitian community, amplifying the fear that most live with in the city where they feel that at any moment, they could be the next victims.
Like many from their country, where a mix of corruption, armed groups and natural disasters have caused thousands to flee, the Archange siblings have been migrating around the Western Hemisphere for years in search of a place where they can live safely.
The older Archange fled Haiti in 2000 after she received threats because she is a lesbian. Her brother had always stood up for her, she said, and the two remained close even after she left. She spent about a decade in the Dominican Republic before moving to Chile — both countries where Haitians in particular have experienced racism and xenophobia.
After receiving threats of his own, her brother joined her in Chile about five years ago.
Eventually, they decided that the only place where they could find refuge was the United States. But a policy known as Title 42 implemented at the beginning of the pandemic has instructed U.S. border officials to keep out asylumseekers and other undocumented migrants and to expel those who cross without permission either to Mexico or their home countries. Those expulsions happen without allowing migrants access to the otherwise legally required asylum screening process to see if they qualify as refugees if they say they are afraid to go back home.
Though the policy was introduced by the Trump administration and criticized by many experts as xenophobic and unnecessary, the Biden administration argued that Title 42 was needed to slow the spread of COVID-19 and kept the policy in place.
For Haitians, Title 42 has meant more than 17,700 people expelled from the United States from January 2021 through April 2022, according to the most recent data available from Customs and Border Protection.
It’s not clear from the government data to where these Haitians were expelled, but Witness at the Border, a group of activists who monitor immigration custody flights, noted in a recent report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent 36 flights to Haiti in May, tying January with the second highest number that the group has recorded for the country. The highest number was in September 2021, when officials sent 58 flights to Haiti.