Warnings grow over unsanitary camp conditions
Aid workers and humanitarian organizations expressed concerns Thursday about the unsanitary conditions at the sports complex in Tijuana where more than 6,000 Central American migrants are packed into a space adequate for half that many people and where lice infestations and respiratory infections are rampant.
As a chill rain fell, the dust that coated everyone and everything in the open-air stadium turned to mud Thursday, making the already miserable conditions worse. On one side of the complex, a mud pit grew where people took outdoor showers next to a line of foul-smelling portable toilets.
The one large wedding-style tent pitched in the middle of a sports field and several smaller ones with a capacity for just a few hundred people were far from adequate for the swelling number of migrants who keep arriving daily. The vast majority of the migrants were camped in makeshift enclosures made of lashed blankets and sheets of plastic or flimsy tents. Another 200 people slept on sidewalks because they couldn’t find space in the complex or decided it was more comfortable outside.
“The truth is there is no room there inside. We asked yesterday,” said Astrid Yajaira of Sonsonante, El Salvador, who spent the night with three friends on a sidewalk in front of a warehouse across the street from the stadium. She had a sore throat and had hoped to find shelter inside.
The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said it was “deeply concerned” for the well-being of more than 1,000 migrant children waiting in Tijuana or still moving north through Mexico. According to local officials, of the more than 6,150 migrants at the shelter as of Wednesday, 1,068 were children.