Right now just South of the border
are 10s of thousands of refugees
who have been waiting months.
In some cases years to
enter the United States
and while they wait they're now
watching Ukrainian people enter
the United States immediately under
what's called humanitarian parole.
So earlier this week I visited some
of the shelters in Tijuana housing
the refugees who aren't being led in.
Most are from Central America and Haiti,
and many of them are children.
Grande, una brazo Grupo Ohh gracias gracias.
They don't.
Orders.
Honduras Edu Honduras.
Here are just some of the kids I met
during my visit to Tijuana.
They are all enamored by visitors,
especially Americans.
Now this video was taken at
the area's largest shelter.
It's called sea dad,
Edios, or City of God.
It houses 1100 refugees and
seemingly appears out of nowhere.
Photographer Kenny McGregor
and I drove through some rough
terrain to get there initially.
The only structure in the area
was a church and that served as a
temporary shelter back in 2016,
but the need now.
Is so high that more and more structures
are being built to house refugees.
In fact,
most of the people you see in
this video building them are
refugees themselves as we saw
them working while we were there.
So this is just a small sampling
of part of that trip to Tijuana.
You say years does that?
Are these people all from the pandemic?
And because of Title 42 or are some
of them even dating before that?
Some of them are dating.
Before that a lot of the people,
for example from Haiti,
have been there for you know 3/4.
5-6 years, but mostly the Central Americans,
they have been there for a
year or two because Title 42,
which was put in during the pandemic
basically banned them from seeking asylum.
It was actually a health call.
It wasn't a call that had
anything to do with immigration.
It was more so for the health
of the people in the US.
So once that was put on hold where
they couldn't apply for asylum,
they wound up staying in Mexico
for longer than they envisioned.
And so now they've created these
homes essentially at these shelters.
Because they've been there for so long,
and these young children
don't know anything different.
This has been their life.
Yeah, so it was very eye opening to see.
And you know, pretty sad to see these kids,
but at the same time they are happy
children and they're running around.
But they're not in school,
you know, and they're just in these
conditions that are OK for now,
but it shouldn't be that way.
And there's actually two dozen
refugee shelters in Tijuana.
All of them are full.
That was the largest one,
but a lot of the refugees from Central
American Haiti share one bedroom.
Apartments and for supplies.
Many of them rely on a drop in center
called Madres Deportados Anexion.
That means deported mothers in action
as San Diego woman named Maria Galleta
started it a decade ago initially
to help women deported from the US.
But over the past couple of
years because of the pandemic,
it's evolved into a place where people
seeking asylum can go as they wait.
And here's some of my interview with Maria.
What drives
you? What makes you want
to do this every day?
Like been living in the United States?
I feel really lucky because I grew up in
Mexico and I know I know how you live here.
You know how hard it is to live here
you can see the smile in their face
when you give something to them.
You know I see like they're happy.
They didn't expect that.
And sometimes they make comments like
I didn't know you can do that for me.
And I say I wish I can do more, you know.
And Carlos, she's like the
Mother Teresa of Mexico.
I'll call her mother Mary.
And you know, the reason I wanted to
go down there and hear from these
other immigrants is because we've
done so many stories on the Ukrainian
refugees which are so important
they've gone through so much.
But a lot of the other people
waiting feel like they're
forgotten and understandably so.
I wanted to hear from them directly,
because it is hard for them to
see Ukrainian refugees coming in,
and they don't really understand
the process or why.
So we wanted to make sure
we shared their voices
too. And are we gonna get any progress
on them or are these people are?
Is there any new process coming now that
Title 42 is set to stop that we're going
to halt enforcing that at the border?
Yes, a title 42 ends on May 23rd
and I did reach out to Homeland
Security last week about this topic
and they said essentially that they
have sent more agents to the border.
To plan for that, and they do plan
to process more asylum claims.
The question is, how fast will
they be processing them?
How many people will they process?
What will it be like?
A lot of people in Mexico feel like
our government isn't prepared for
the influx of people that are going
to show up at the border and say,
Hey Title 42 is over now let us in so
we'll see what happens in the next
month. There's a lot of fear being
generated about people having a
big surge coming into the country,
so there are a lot of concerns all around.
Yeah, so we'll stay on top of it.
Look forward to seeing more of that.
Great interview and it's fascinating watching
the children interact with you, yeah?