Nogales, Mexico, drafts plan for caravan arrival

NOGALES, Mexico – As active-duty soldiers continued to fortify the ports of entry in Nogales, including shutting down two of the eight lanes at the main border crossing, its twin city of Nogales, Sonora, started planning for the arrival of Central American migrants traveling in a caravan.

Elected officials, law enforcement and community groups here are keeping a close eye on developments in Tijuana, a border city 365 miles away from Ambos Nogales.

The arrival of hundreds of migrants there in the past few days has strained tensions between them and residents and has put pressure on resources.

“There’s going to be a moment where they will become desperate and they will look for another option — that’s what we have to prepare for,” said Jorge Jauregui Lewis, the city manager for Nogales, Sonora, who is coordinating the government and community preparations on the Mexican side.

He pointed to the case of stranded Haitian migrants who two years ago flocked to Tijuana to claim asylum. When the city became overwhelmed with their arrival, many of them left to other border cities, including San Luis and Nogales in Arizona.

Municipal officials said they’ve brought together local, state and federal law enforcement, in addition to health authorities and migrant and community groups, to put together a plan for the potential arrival or spillover of Central American migrants to their community.

As part of the plan, government and civic groups will set up a inspection point south of Nogales to register and track the arrival of migrants. They will then bus them to the city’s baseball stadium, where they will provide migrants with medical care if needed, and then transport them to shelters to wait for their turn to claim asylum in the United States.

Jauregui Lewis said they will only put the plan into place should large numbers of migrants from caravan arrive in Nogales. Over the past few months, there’s been a steady flow of smaller numbers of migrants traveling to the border on their own.

Non-profit community groups on the Mexican side have been helping them so far, creating a numbering system and coordinating transportation from the DeConcini port of entry in downtown Nogales to the shelters where they’re staying.

Joanna Williams, the director of advocacy for the Nogales-based migrant aid group Kino Border Initiative, said that so far none of the migrants they’ve helped at their shelter and soup kitchen have claimed to be a part of the large caravan heading to Tijuana.

“We saw a bit of an increase (in arrivals) beginning last week, but they’re not a part of the caravan,” Williams said. “We do know that they have been through Hermosillo, and many of them are still in Hermosillo. So far we don’t have a documented case in Nogales.”

Jauregui Lewis said that as part of their contingency plan they’ve reached agreements with several groups to set up additional shelter space. But he declined to provide additional details, citing security concerns.

“We’ve seen on social media and in the media that there’s been somewhat of a rejection on behalf of the community (in Nogales) to the arrival of the caravan,” he explained. “So we don’t want to publicize it, especially where they will be staying. But, we do have the locations, which will be guarded by public safety officers.”

Meanwhile, across the border on the American side, U.S. Customs Border Protection told border-crossers in Nogales they should prepare for longer wait times at the DeConcini crossing as they continued to “harden” ports of entry, in anticipation of the caravan’s potential arrival.

Already, soldiers had installed concertina barbed wire atop the ports of entry in Nogales, and they began doing the same at the other five border crossings at Arizona’s border with Mexico.

On Wednesday, soldiers shut down two of the eight passenger car lanes at DeConcini. They installed two metal containers to block those the lanes, and then mounted several layers of concertina wire.

“CBP will provide an update when the materials are removed and the lanes re-opened, however it is not anticipated this will occur until after the caravan arrives at the border,” the agency said in a statement. “Persons traveling through some ports of entry may anticipate periodic increased wait times because of these exercises.”

The move drew mixed reactions among Nogales area residents waiting to cross the border to Arizona on Thursday afternoon.

Griselda Espinoza was sat waiting in the passenger side of an SUV, several dozen feet from the metal containers and barbed wire. She said she wasn’t too bothered with the lane closures because she doesn’t cross that often.

“But the lines move fairly quickly. Plus it’s better that they have two lanes closed as opposed to shutting down the crossing completely,” she added.

When asked what she thought about the U.S. soldiers and the barbed wire at the border, she said she was OK with it. “It’s for prevention,” she said.

Jesus Javier Ochoa, who was driving the SUV, had a different point of view.

“They’re going overboard, are you kidding me? Who do they think these (migrants) are?” he added. “We’re clearly in disagreement.”