Federico Ortega awoke Saturday morning at his residence in Tijuana’s Zona Norte neighborhood, walked to the edge of his walled complex, and pushed open the steel door, where he was met with a shock — hundreds of migrants eating breakfast on the sidewalk outside his home.

“There was such a line that I couldn’t get out,” Ortega recalled hours later as he stood near that same steel door, his arms folded across an FC Barcelona soccer jersey.

He watched as a Tijuana pastor stood on the back bumper of a white church bus and spent hours handing out donated clothes to the Central American migrants who traveled to the border in a much-publicized caravan, with the hope of crossing into the United States.

The men, women and children lined up outside Ortega’s home on Calle Michoacan were some of the nearly 2,500 migrants who’ve found refuge at the municipal sports stadium that has been turned into a temporary shelter, the entrance of which sits less than 100 feet from Ortega’s residence.


Nearly 3,000 migrants — most of them from Honduras and Guatemala — have reached Tijuana, though there did not appear to be any new groups that arrived Saturday. But officials and Tijuana residents alike know that won’t last long.

The Mexican federal government estimates the migrant crowd in Tijuana could soon grow to 10,000.

And tensions have been rising as the number of migrants to reach the city has swelled. On Thursday night, a confrontation broke out in the well-to-do Playas de Tijuana area between a group of migrants and residents who were protesting their presence.

Ivis Munoz, 26, said he feels unwelcome in Tijuana and has considered going back to Honduras, where he is fleeing gang violence after being shot in the leg. Munoz was asleep on the beach at Playas de Tijuana with about two dozen other migrants when rocks came raining down on them around 2 a.m. Wednesday.


1 / 16 Pastor Ariosco Vazquez tosses out clothes to the outstretched hands as Vazquez and members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana hand out donated clothes to Central American migrants while outside of the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 16 Men and and boys shower at the outfield fence of a baseball field, where several showers are set up for migrants at the Unidad Deportiva Benito Ju‡rez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 16 Olvin Martinez cuts Marlon Valle’s hair at the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, where Martinez and Valle, both from Honduras, are staying in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 16 Marlon Valle looks in a broken mirror as a fellow Honduran cuts his hair at the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, where Valle is staying in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 16 Migrants camp in and around the dugouts, under the bleachers, and on a baseball field at the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 16 Washed clothes are hung to dry as migrants stand on a baseball field in the background at the Unidad Deportiva Benito Juárez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 16 Gerado Lopez, from Honduras, holds up his one-year-old nephew Neythan Zuniga at the Unidad Deportiva Benito Juárez, a sports complex that has been converted to a shelter for the migrants, in Tijuana. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 16 Two men have a tug-of-war over a pair of pants as members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana hand out donated clothes to migrants. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 16 Billy NoÃ© Martinez looks at the pair of pants he just received as members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana hand out donated clothes to migrants. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 16 Andres Gonzalez, from Guatemala, reaches for a shirt as members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana hand out donated clothes to migrants. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 16 Migrants clamor for clothes as members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana hand out donated clothes to migrants. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 16 Migrants hold up their hands as they clamor for clothes as members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana hand out donated clothing to migrants. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 16 Mirna Quintanilla, from Honduras, folds the clothes she just received from members of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Tijuana as they hand out donated clothes to migrants. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 14 / 16 A woman goes into a tent as a couple rest on sleeping pads at the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez sports complex. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 15 / 16 Showers have been set up for migrants along the outfield fence of a baseball field at the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez sports complex. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 16 / 16 A child holds a baby while in a tent set up next to a baseball field dugout at the Unidad Deportiva Benito JuÃ¡rez sports complex. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)

He heard a man shout in the darkness: “We don’t want you here! Go back to your country!” Munoz and the others got up and ran for cover, heading toward the residential streets nearby. As the sun rose, they hitched a ride on a passing truck to Tijuana’s downtown. Now he is staying at the sports complex.

Carlos Padilla, 57, a migrant from Progreso, Honduras, said a Tijuana resident shouted “migrants are pigs” as he passed on the street recently. He did not respond.

“We didn’t come here to cause problems, we came here with love and with the intention to ask for asylum,” Padilla said. “But they treat us like animals here.”


The tension has spilled over the border fence, as well.

Authorities on the U.S. side closed part of Friendship Park after a rock attack there Friday night apparently targeted Border Patrol officials near the fence.

“Friday night, at around 5:45 pm, San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott was touring an area just north of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Imperial Beach. During the tour, rocks were thrown from unknown persons who were south of the border,” CBP spokesman Ralph DeSio told Fox 5 San Diego.

DeSio said that while no one was injured, “at least one rock hit a portable light on the north side of the border.”


“Due to unrest in this location, the area known as Friendship Circle has been closed to visitors until further notice,” the official said. The park is controlled by Border Patrol and consists of a small section of fence where friends and families on both sides of the barrier can speak with one another.

Ortega, a retiree who also has a residence in San Ysidro, was diplomatic when asked about his new neighbors at the sports complex.

“No, I don’t feel uncomfortable with them here,” he said, as a migrant who had wandered toward him listened in on his conversation with a reporter. “There are some who are good, some who are bad.”

Nearby, a young couple tried to calm a fussy infant, who finally went to sleep while being breastfed and rocked by his mother.


“I’m sad for the people with kids,” Ortega said.

Other Tijuana residents have taken to local talk radio stations and Facebook — there is an open group called “Tijuana against the migrant caravan” — to disparage the migrants, or even call for violence against them.

“What these people are doing in our country and especially in our city is unacceptable,” read a post by the administrator of the anti-migrant page. “They have more rights than us as citizens.”

The sentiments expressed by many Facebook users mirrored comments that Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum made in an interview Thursday on Milenio TV, a Mexican national television network, where he complained about the arrival of the caravan members: “Some of them are a bunch of bums, smoking marijuana in the street, and attacking our families in Playas de Tijuana,” the mayor said. “Who is leading them?”


But Enrique Morones, the founder and executive director of the migrant aid group Border Angels, lashed out at Gastelum and others who share his views at a news conference Saturday.

“Border Angels is here to say that the immigrants are welcome. They are welcome in Playas de Tijuana, they are welcome in Tijuana and they are welcome in Mexico,” Morones said.

“And we’re furious — absolutely furious — that Tijuana now also has a Donald Trump, whose name is Juan Manuel Gastelum,” Morones said. “How is it possible … that the mayor of this city says that immigrants are criminals, that they bring illnesses, that they’re dangerous? Those are Donald Trump’s same words. We have battled very hard against racism in the United States — and like we always say, love has no borders, but sadly neither does racism.”

On Friday, Los Angeles City Councilman Gil Cedillo held a press conference to announce that a group of 75 non-profit organizations called “The Coalition of Mexican Migrants” will join Morones’ Border Angels to provide humanitarian relief for the Central American migrants.


The partnership said it has coordinated free services and aid for the asylum seekers, including food, water, clothing, sanitation, health care, shelter, and financial and legal assistance.

Alden Rivera, the Honduran ambassador in Mexico, visited the outdoor sports complex Saturday. Rivera expects the migrants will need to be sheltered for eight months or more, and said he is working with Mexico to get more funds to feed and care for them.

He expects the migrant numbers in Tijuana to reach 3,400 over the weekend, with another 1,200 migrants having made it to Mexicali, another border city a few hours to the east of Tijuana. An additional 1,500 migrants plan to reach the U.S. border region next week.

For those hoping to seek asylum in the U.S., the wait is long, with 3,000 names already on an unofficial list being managed by the migrants themselves.


Some migrants might go another route. The Mexican Interior Ministry said Friday that 2,697 Central American migrants have requested asylum in Mexico under a program that the country launched on Oct. 26 to more quickly get them credentials needed to live, work and study in southern Mexico.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


Twitter: @Alex_Riggins

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