(Corrects to add “Rodriguez” in the name of Mexican Interior Minister Rosa Icela, paragraph 16)
By Laura Gottesdiener, Lizbeth Diaz
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexican authorities have begun building giant shelter tents in the city of Ciudad Juarez to prepare for a possible influx of Mexicans expelled in mass expulsions promised by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ciudad Juarez’s temporary shelters will have the capacity to house thousands of people and should be ready within days, city official Enrique Licon said.
“This is unprecedented,” Licon said Tuesday afternoon, as workers unloaded long metal racks from tractor-trailers parked in the large empty lots of the Rio Grande, which separates the city from El Paso, Texas. .
The tents in Ciudad Juarez are part of the Mexican government’s plan to prepare shelters and reception centers in nine cities in northern Mexico.
Authorities there will provide expelled Mexicans with food, temporary housing, medical care and assistance in obtaining identity documents, according to a government document outlining the strategy, titled “Mexico Kisses You.”
The government also plans to have a fleet of buses ready to transport Mexicans from reception centers to their hometowns.
Trump has pledged to lead the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, which would remove millions of immigrants. However, an operation of this magnitude would likely take years and be extremely expensive.
Nearly 5 million Mexicans are living in the United States without authorization, according to an analysis by Mexican think tank El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) based on recent U.S. census data.
Many come from regions of central and southern Mexico ravaged by violence and poverty. According to the COLEF study, some 800,000 undocumented Mexicans in the United States are from Michoacán, Guerrero and Chiapas, where violent fighting between organized crime groups has forced thousands to flee in recent years, sometimes leaving entire cities abandoned.
MEXICO COULD STRUGGLE
The Mexican government says it is ready to face the possibility of mass expulsions. But immigration advocates have doubts, fearing that the combination of mass expulsions and Trump’s moves to block migrants from entering the United States will quickly overwhelm Mexican border cities.
The Trump administration on Monday ended a program, known as CBP One, that allowed some migrants waiting in Mexico to enter the United States legally by securing an appointment on a government app. On Tuesday, he announced he was reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), an initiative that required non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their cases to be resolved in the United States.
On Monday, José Luis Perez, then director of migration issues in Tijuana, became one of the few Mexican officials to express concerns about whether Mexico was truly prepared.
“Basically, with the cancellation of CBP One and the deportations, the government is not coordinated to receive them,” he said.
Hours later, he was fired in what he said was retaliation for issuing such warnings.
The city government did not respond to questions about his dismissal.
“Mexico will do everything necessary to take care of its compatriots and will dedicate everything necessary to welcome those who are repatriated,” Mexican Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez said Monday at the conference of daily morning press.
But with sluggish economic growth forecast this year, Mexico may struggle to absorb the millions of Mexicans expelled from the United States, while a significant drop in remittances could cause “serious economic disruption” in cities and towns. villages across the country that rely on that income, said Wayne Cornelius, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego.
On Thursday evening in Ciudad Juarez, about 20 soldiers worked in the sheltered tent near a tall black cross where, in 2016, Pope Francis celebrated an open-air mass, warned of a humanitarian crisis and prayed for migrants . The soldiers, in the growing darkness, began building an industrial kitchen to feed the deportees.