National

Mexican asylum seekers fill shelters along the California border

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — As the nation's attention has been fixed on the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy and its impact, especially on Central American families in Texas, a different story has unfolded along California's border with Mexico.

While people have been fleeing southwestern Mexico for years, since January, migrant shelter operators in Tijuana say they have seen a pronounced increase in families from the states of Michoacán and Guerrero seeking asylum. The asylum seekers tell similar stories of violent criminal gangs that have become more brazen in recent months. Practically all of the families recount stories of extortion, kidnapping or murder.

The Mexican asylum seekers are filling shelters along the border, as they wait their turn to make a claim. Volunteers maintain a list of asylum seekers outside Tijuana's El Chaparral port of entry; there are people from Central America, Africa and the Middle East seeking asylum, but most appear to be Mexican. At this point, many of them anticipate they'll be waiting for three to four weeks.

"They're displaced by violence," said Mari Galván, a social worker at Albergue Madre Asunta, a migrant shelter in Tijuana. "They're receiving death threats. They're asked to pay a fee, and if they don't, their whole family could be killed."

In April, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy, which detailed how the U.S. Department of Justice was to prosecute every migrant who enters the country illegally. Since then, federal officials have been encouraging asylum seekers to enter the country legally at the ports of entry.

But at shelters and outside the Tijuana port of entry, many Mexicans from Guerrero and Michoacán said they hadn't heard about the policy causing family separations at the border until they were en route to Tijuana or already arrived. They didn't decide to seek asylum upon Sessions' advice. Rather, they did so out of fear.

Georgina Ayala Mendoza, her husband and their three kids fled Michoacán on May 3. A day earlier, gunmen — Ayala believes they were members of a cartel — entered her mother-in-law's home and killed two of her husband's brothers, she said. Another brother-in-law disappeared five years ago, she said. She worried the cartel would try to recruit her husband to work with them — or face the same fate as his brothers.

The family left their home the next day. They hid in another town until they got plane tickets to Tijuana.

On Wednesday, Ayala Mendoza and her husband waited in a warehouse-like room at Movimiento Juventud 2000. A game show blared on a television; kids sprawled on the floor and painted watercolor pictures. Some rested in camping tents arranged in rows across the shelter.

"I want to cry, but I don't know how to," Ayala Mendoza said. Her eyes looked watery, but not a single tear rolled down her cheek. She said she tries to stay strong for her kids, ages 12, 9 and 7.

Berenice García Guevara sat nearby. Less than a month ago, a group of men kidnapped her from the liquor store in Michoacan where she worked and held for three days.

"Luckily, one of them let me leave," she said.

After her ordeal, García Guevara's aunt in Nevada encouraged her to gather her three kids and make the trip to Tijuana to seek asylum.

"I'm afraid it will happen again," she said.

Michoacán and Guerrero have been consistently and unrelentingly violent for more than 10 years, said Everard Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

In March, the U.S. State Department listed Guerrero and Michoacán as two of five Mexican states to which U.S. citizens should not travel. In Guerrero, armed groups operate independently of the government, according to the department's advisory.

Earlier this month, Pepsi closed its distribution center in Guerrero amid drug gang extortion demands, according to the Associated Press. The company's decision came months after Coca-Cola closed its distribution center, also in Guerrero.

Just this week, two mayoral candidates in Michoacán were killed within 24 hours, according to the Associated Press. At least 18 candidates have been killed leading up to the country's July 1 elections, the AP reported. The states of Michoacán, Guerrero and Oaxaca have been particularly hard hit.

Meade said political corruption has become a growing source of income for criminal organizations, which is now affecting people's everyday lives. He said that in his research, he's noticed a "tremendous sense of resignation and fatalism" as Mexicans endure seemingly never-ending violence and corruption.

"The duration of this conflict itself is also shaping the idea that people are willing to take a risk in the U.S.," he said.

"It's one thing to have a horrible thing like have one of your kids forcibly disappeared," he explained. "It's another thing and another layer to have total impunity for that. It adds another layer when nothing gets resolved in five or 10 years. And then you see it happens to other people's kids and you feel powerless to do something about it."

This was the case for Guadalupe Arcos Ávila, who on Thursday waited outside the DiConcinni Port of Entry along the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales. She finally decided to flee her rural town in Guerrero after a pregnant woman and her 6-year-old were shot dead in a gun battle between rival "narco" hit men.

"Now they're killing kids and women indiscriminately," Arcos Ávila said.

Unlike in Tijuana, most of the 150 families who've arrived in Nogales since May are from Guatemala, said Marla Conrad, a coordinator with the Kino Border Initiative, a Catholic-run group that operates two migrant shelters there. Second to Guatemala, she said, people are fleeing Mexico, mostly from Guerrero.

Arcos Ávila said she had considered for five months whether to leave her town. Sometimes, she felt the violence was another gunfight away from killing her or her children. But then the situation would cool off and she wouldn’t go. That changed after her husband's pregnant cousin and child were killed.

Since she left earlier this month, Arcos Ávila hasn't been able to reach her husband — the town is without power because one of the organized-crime groups took over its energy towers.

"Things are getting worse," she said.

Mexican nationals have the lowest chance of asylum of any national group with a significant number of applicants — about 10 percent, Meade of the University of San Diego said.

He attributed this to several factors. He said Mexicans comprise the largest group of people placed in deportation proceedings in the country and people will sometimes try to apply for asylum to avoid deportation. Mexico also suffers from a "curse of familiarity," he said, since Americans frequently travel to the country.

But Mexican families seeking asylum face a more immediate concern: How will the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policies affect them?

The president signed an executive order Wednesday ending the practice of separating families. Even before then, federal officials said they wouldn't separate asylum-seeking families. But the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a class action lawsuit, alleging immigration officials have separated mothers and children who sought asylum at ports of entry.

On Wednesday, Alejandra Isabel González remained nervous about what the policy would mean for her family. She said they didn't learn about it until they arrived at the Tijuana shelter.

At the shelter, she recounted how a nephew was kidnapped on his way home from work. An uncle was forced out of his car; people — she said she's not sure who — threw some sort of liquid in his eyes, blinding him. Then they took the car and left him in the street. She worried her five kids could be kidnapped.

"We fled fear at home and we arrived here to find the same thing," she said.

Contributing: Laura Gómez, The Arizona Republic

Follow Rebecca Plevin on Twitter: @rebeccaplevin