A visit to the migrant camp on the border between San Diego and Tijuana
SAN DIEGO — On California’s southern border, two parallel, towering fences stretch for miles, their reddish steel beams cutting through rugged hills filled with tall yellow wildflowers, marking where Mexico ends and the United States begins.
About 10 days ago, as the end of a pandemic-era deportation policy known as Title 42 approached, a migrant camp sprang up between the two border walls, with hundreds of people hoping to enter the United States. I traveled to San Diego and Tijuana last week to report on the sprawling and diverse camp, its existence spoke of America’s shifting immigration policies and the desperation of migrants from around the world seeking to better opportunities.
“There is no other choice,” says Azamat Alin, 41, who spent at least $10,000 on a long journey from Kazakhstan to Brazil and then across Central America to Mexico.
Alin was looking for financial opportunity and political freedom in the United States. He had not expected to spend several nights in a migrant camp without shelter or sanitary facilities. When I spoke to him through the metal bars of the border wall, he was wearing a plastic bag on his head to keep warm and had just spent his last few dollars on a box of Little Caesars pizza sold to him by a Tijuana courier off the wall .
But he still would have made the trip, he said, had he known conditions would be this grim.
“Everyone is looking at the arrivals at the border, but the root of the problem is push factors within the countries of origin that will persist,” Justin Gest, a political scientist at George Mason University who studies immigration, told my colleague Miriam Jordan. “When crises occur, they generate flows to the north.”
At the border between San Diego and Tijuana, about 1,000 people jumped the first barrier separating the cities last week and then got stuck behind another wall, awaiting processing by US officials. The area between the two border walls is technically on US soil, but is considered a neutral zone of sorts. A Colombian man at the camp told me he paid $1,500 to smugglers who sawed a hole in the fence on the Mexico side for him, his partner, and his toddler to climb through.
Reporters can’t get into the camp, but we crowded the San Diego side to talk to migrants through the wall. I saw hundreds of families there, huddled for warmth under Mylar blankets, sharing protein bars and bottled water. Some had tents made of tarpaulin and black plastic garbage bags.
A mother brushed her daughter’s long brown hair. A father chased his giggling toddler through the litter-strewn patch of dirt.
I had never seen such a diverse group of people in one place, with migrants from Angola, Russia, Guinea, Venezuela, Turkey, Pakistan and dozens of other countries. They wore styles and clothes from all over the world: straw sun hats, hijabs, tank tops, ponchos and kofias.
The scarce food and water supply spawned new businesses – delivery drivers on the Mexico side sold fried chicken, loaves of bread and bottles of Coke through the wall – as well as a conspicuous order system in the camp.
As aid workers handed out toilet paper, sacks of clementines, water bottles and packs of toothbrushes, migrants from different regions assigned leaders to collect and distribute supplies for their groups.
The Africans in the camp – from Ghana, Somalia, Kenya, Guinea, Nigeria – chose a tall Somali man who communicated with aid organizations about the number of pads and blankets they needed that day. The Colombians had their own leader; just like the Afghans, the Turks and the Haitians.
According to Adriana Jasso, a volunteer with the American Friends Service Committee, the system evolved organically as migrants tried to ease tensions between groups fighting over limited resources.
“People are cold, hungry, desperate, destitute, nervous,” she told me. “It’s a dire situation to say the least.”
Where we travel
Today’s tip comes from Jennifer Russell:
“Living in the Bay Area means access to our beautiful East Bay Regional Parks. They are especially wonderful in the spring with wildflowers, salamanders, lush green hills, trails for every skill level, soaring birds, expansive views, rushing creeks and much more. My favorites are Briones, Tilden and Castle Rock.”
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We will share more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.
And before you go, good news
The City Nature Challenge is an annual competition that calls on people around the world to take and submit photos of plants, animals and insects in their backyards and neighborhoods.
Originally started in 2016 by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the competition aims to help people connect with nature while also documenting and celebrating biodiversity.