Cities such as Tijuana remain full of asylum seekers hoping US authorities will give them a chance at a new beginning. Here are five of those stories

The rules keep changing, the deterrents keep getting harsher, but the people keep coming.

Thousands of children are still being held in US detention centres or housed with strangers after being forcibly separated from their parents as part of Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” doctrine aimed at deterring migrants and asylum seekers.

The punitive tactics were first defended and then apparently softened after the US president ended his own policy, but the fate of 2,300 children who had already been seized remains unclear, and the executive order signed by Trump could lead to families being detained together indefinitely.

But despite the political turmoil, cities such as Tijuana remain full of asylum seekers still hopeful that US authorities will listen, understand and give them a chance at a new beginning.

This is the American dream from the Mexican border.

Fleeing crime in Guatemala

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yulmin De León, 17, in the YMCA shelter for unaccompanied minors in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Nina Lakhani/The Guardian

Yulmin De León, 17, is from a rural village in the mountainous region of San Marcos, western Guatemala. She arrived in Tijuana earlier this week by bus, alone, and plans to seek asylum in the US. This is her first time outside San Marcos – a region where gangs have infiltrated far-flung communities already burdened by deep-seated poverty.

Just over three weeks ago, De León was approached by a young woman, aged 19 or 20 she thinks, offering her a chance to “make easy money” selling drugs. “I’d seen her before hanging out with the mafiosos who came to live in our community last year. First there were maybe four or five, but now there are so many of them. I told her no, she said I couldn’t just say no to these people, but there was one other option – that they sell my body and keep the money.”

Four girls aged 14 to 17 have disappeared from the village in the past few months. So for the next couple of weeks, De León stayed indoors as her campesino parents hatched a plan to save her life.

Now she is staying at a YMCA shelter for unaccompanied minors. She hopes to reach an aunt in North Carolina.

A week or so before De León left Guatemala, her good friend Shirley, also 17, was killed. She’d been offered the same job by the same people, and had said no. No one has been arrested.

'If we go back they will kill us all': impossible choices at US border Read more

“I’m here because I don’t want the same to happen to me”.

Escaping domestic violence in Mexico

Moira Romero, 26, from Morelia, capital of the Mexican state of Michoacán in central Mexico, is staying at the Madre Assunta Scalabrini women’s shelter with her three-month-old daughter who gurgles happily and breastfeeds in between long naps.

Romero packed a suitcase and boarded a plane to Tijuana on Monday after her ex-partner threatened to take the baby away by force. The pair were together only a few months, during which Romero says he drank heavily and was unkind and aggressive. They broke up while she was pregnant, but he continued to call or turn up at the house. After the baby was born, he refused to help financially but wanted access. “He frightens me, threatens all sorts by phone – of course, I won’t leave my baby with him. The only way he can take her is by getting rid of me, that’s why I left.”

Domestic violence is a major factor driving women’s migration from Central America, but last week the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said he would order US courts to stop granting asylum to victims.

Romero is currently around 900th in the asylum-seeking queue, waiting for a “reasonable fear” interview with US immigration officials.

“I still have faith that if I get in front of an agent, they will listen to me and give us a chance. I hope I don’t regret this.”



Romero hopes to be reunited with her sister, who works in a restaurant in New Orleans.

Travelling north with the caravan

Jonathan López, 26 and his partner Carolina Rivera, 21, from San Salvador, travelled through Mexico as part of the caravan of migrants maligned by Trump, which arrived in Tijuana in May.

The couple is from neighbourhoods controlled by two rival street gangs – Calle 18 and Mala Salvatrucha 13 – which they say made living a normal life impossible. They have two children, aged three and six, who they left at home with Rivera’s mother. “We were too scared to bring the children, as our plan is to cross with a coyote,” said López.

Most members of the caravan have either entered the US – either as asylum seekers or crossing irregularly – or remain in Mexico where many, including Rivera and López, were granted temporary humanitarian visas allowing them to work.

Morgues shut doors as ultra-violent Mexican state is overwhelmed by bodies Read more

But they don’t want to stay in Mexico: the US is the dream. “The plan is to save enough money for a coyote, get across, find work, send money home to support our children and one day bring them to the US to join us. That’s the dream. I’m 98% sure we’ll do it,” said López.

Avoiding the drug war

María López and Roberto Santos are from a small mountain village in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero where the current homicide rate of 77 per 100,000 people is one of the highest in the world. The couple fled the rural community where they’d grown up, married and had their son around three years ago after an armed group wrongly accused Santos of stealing a horse. “They tried to force him to meet with the jefes, claiming he just had to explain himself, but we knew what they really wanted was our land, which they would take one way or another,” said López.

In recent years, the fertile community has been taken over by warring drug gangs who replaced maize and vegetable crops with poppies. The vast majority of 900 or so habitants have fled, forced to abandon homes, livestock and once productive land. “It’s a ghost town now, just poppies and gun battles,” said López in front of the Tijuana-San Diego border bridge, where they’ve come to see how far they’ve advanced on the asylum seeker’s waiting list.

If they try to take my son, I won’t let them Maria López

The young family moved to the state capital Chilpancingo and started to build a new life. Santos worked construction, López was a cook’s assistant, and their son, now almost four, attended kindergarten.

But earlier this month, they received message that the criminal group knew where they were living, and they felt they had to run. “We couldn’t stay and wait to find out, what if they kill my son,” López said.

The couple hope they’ll be allowed to stay with an uncle in Chicago while their asylum claim is considered. “It’s inhumane what they’re doing to children, but we’re doing things the right way. If they try to take my son, I won’t let them,” said López.

Running from the gangs

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Josué Méndez and Leticia Palma, from San Salvador, at the Juventud 2000 shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Nina Lakhani/The Guardian

Josué Méndez, 28 and Leticia Palma, 28, from San Salvador, are living in a tent at the Juventud 2000 shelter with their three children aged 10, six and 10 months. They – like almost every other migrant from the country – are fleeing gangs. Méndez says he was forced to abandon his handicrafts business because he couldn’t afford to pay protection fees the gangs wanted. He sold up and tried to cross the US border in 2016, but eventually handed himself over to the border patrol after the coyote – or guide – abandoned the group when one man got sick.

One murder every hour: how El Salvador became the homicide capital of the world Read more

Méndez was deported, and restarted his business. “It was fine for a few months, but they found me, asked for more money – $200 every fortnight – and also said they wanted me to move drugs and guns around the country. These people don’t forget.”

Méndez moved neighbourhoods and tried to find the money to leave with Palma, this time as a family. But Palma was targeted by a local gang leader, who tried to force her into a sexual relationship. “He was going to hurt me, but I had my baby in my arms and my little girl with me, so he let me go with a warning. But he had decided, so it would have happened eventually.”

The couple are closely monitoring the news, in hope of skirting the constantly evolving restrictions. “We won’t lie, but can change how we tell our stories so that we’re not immediately rejected. We understand they don’t want us, that they’re taking children to stop people like us, but we have to try,” said Méndez.