Tijuana continued.

I was expecting a different scene when I got to Tijuana. I  was expecting streets lined with homeless asylum seekers, camped around the door at Al Otro Lado. It wasn’t so. They were invisible. We arrived Saturday and Tijuana looked like any city, with pedestrians and thriving mercados, and the same on all other days. When they did come to the AOL door from 12:30 till 1 each day, I didn’t know where they had come from. I didn’t visit the shelters, which all accounts paint as full to capacity, and I didn’t see the street dwellers, and I didn’t ask. My  assignment was to welcome the people and sign them in so that they could later hear about their rights, or lack of, and have a private consultation, and to be for a few hours in a warm welcoming  place. At the intake, they would  reveal all that they had traveled through and why, and all the details of their current situation.  AOL Border Rights Project celebrated 100 days of legal help during our stay.

Volunteers gather every morning at 7 at the Chaparral, the Plaza on the Tijuana side. There would be a station with a table and a long queue of people, who are there to get a number that in a few days or weeks or longer would be called for the first leg of their journey by van across the border. Near the queue, people who already have numbers mill around. Each number is assigned to 10 people, and they calculate from the last number called yesterday, what day they think they should start showing up for their own ride in the van. Every day 40-70 people are called. Thousands are waiting. The AOL volunteers talk to the waiting people and hand out maps to the AOL office (across from the Wax Museum). This, plus word-of-mouth, is the main outreach strategy, the way to let all those waiting people know that there is a place that really cares and can provide legal Information and medical assistance and a few hours of daycare, and modest food. The numbers are called and the called ones pass behind a barrier, to wait for the vans that will ferry them over.

      The barrier in the plaza almost deserted after the morning lineup 

Until Wednesday the 6th of March, every day, AOL volunteers were back there too, beyond the barrier, with those preparing to leave, with two critical missions. First, to hand out Sharpies and instruct people to put names, phone numbers, and contact information, on their arms and the arms of their children, to guard as best as possible against the horror of the separation of families. And the other task, equally critical: people will be transported to holding cells on the US side, three stories down, 48 degrees cold, for three to seven days, where they will be permitted to wear only one layer of clothing and no shoes, and AOL must tell them that frightening news.  The volunteers distribute thick warm socks and sweaters, as most asylum seekers don’t know ahead of arriving what awaits them. They are wearing t-shirts, shoes without socks, and they can't put these new clothes on top, they must change into them. This is the only layer they will be permitted.

Allison and I were there Wednesday the 6th. I helped as much as my Spanish allowed, rescued a few times by a native speaker. But the guard was unhappy with our presence that day, with the serious help being offered, and was rather threatening.  We were sent away and couldn't return again to that side of the barrier on Thursday and Friday. A small cadre was chosen for outreach. I was glad I got at least that one day.

Some levity: I was up until midnight Tuesday night, and set my alarm for five-thirty a.m. When the alarm went off Wednesday morning, I dragged myself out of bed into the shower. When I came out of the shower a little more awake I realized that my tablet, on which I had set the alarm, was still on New York time. It was 2:30 in the morning not 5:30, but I was by that time totally awake. So I used my hours to write to my congressman about what I was seeing, and to think, as well as I could.  And then I was awake for a very grueling day again till midnight, so I was secretly happy that I was not one of those chosen for mornings volunteering at the Chaparral, though I would have liked another morning, now a seasoned veteran.