Interview at the Border Line Crisis Center, Tijuana, Mexico
Codirector Judith Cabrera: “I Try to Focus on What’s Possible”
By Melissa del Bosque (Border Chronicle)
HAVANA TIMES – Greetings from the Border Invasion. The first week of February, I drove from Tucson to San Diego/Tijuana. In California I walked through the Border Field State Park to the U.S.-constructed border wall, which trails all the way into the Pacific Ocean. It was a beautiful, foggy morning. On the way, I ran into a group of tourists riding horses down to the beach, several pelicans and seagulls, and one extremely bored Border Patrol agent in an SUV, who said he hadn’t seen any activity all morning.
Despite this reality, the Trump administration has sounded the alarm, declaring a national emergency and deploying at least 1,500 troops to the border to join the other soldiers deployed during the Biden era. Some of those troops, as I wrote in January, were diverted from fighting fires in California to perform in a video, which was then distributed by the White House to the media.
After visiting the American side of the wall, I took a trolley down to the San Ysidro port of entry and walked into Tijuana, following a maze of streets until I reached the Border Line Crisis Center in an abandoned commercial plaza that once sold souvenirs to American tourists. As The Border Chronicle has documented, global migration has been mounting for at least a decade. It’s a phenomenon that is affecting not just the United States. While politicians either weaponize people seeking protection or ignore them altogether, border residents have had to step in to alleviate the real-world suffering. In today’s Q&A, I document the consequences of this in Tijuana, Baja California. Next week, Todd will have another on-the-ground dispatch from Nogales, Sonora.
In 2018, Tijuana resident Judith Cabrera de la Rocha became codirector of the Border Line Crisis Center, during the chaos and uncertainty of the first Trump administration. The nonprofit shelter and community resource center serves women and children who are seeking asylum or who have been deported. On a Friday afternoon, I found Cabrera sitting at a desk at the center, amid children playing while their mothers took English classes nearby provided by an American volunteer. Trump had reinstated the Remain in Mexico policy, and CBP One, the phone app that was the only vehicle for people to legally request asylum appointments, had been shut down. These U.S. policy changes have been sudden and brutal, Cabrera said. There’s also great uncertainty within the Mexican government, she said, as the Trump administration threatens tariffs, and drone strikes if the country doesn’t enact harsher policies on immigrants.
How many people do you shelter every year? And do they go to other border cities first before deciding to come to Tijuana?
Somewhere around 350 people. There’s no limit on their stay. Most people come directly to Tijuana. It’s considered the safest, if you can believe that, because in other parts of the border like Reynosa, Tamaulipas (across from Texas), it’s more common to be kidnapped or assaulted.
How many people are at Border Line now, and where do they come from?
Most everyone we’ve seen last year, and this year are Mexican asylum seekers. They have been forcibly displaced from Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, due to the drug war violence. My limit is 30 people, but we operate usually around 40 or 50 people, including adults and children. Right now we have 36 women and children here.
It’s notoriously difficult for Mexicans to get asylum in the United States. It seems like the underlying problem is this violence that is displacing so many people in Mexico and only getting worse. Do you have any hope that Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum can make a difference?
I don’t have high hopes for the new government. I think Mexico has a civil war that has not been declared. The government is very corrupt. We’ve had this war against drugs since former president [Felipe] Calderón deployed the military in 2006, and it’s been heavily financed by the U.S. and is only getting worse. The fact that the war is not officially acknowledged as such means we don’t even get the protection that would be given if it was declared a war.
What kind of differences did you see between the Trump and Biden administrations?
When the Biden administration started, he ended the Migrant Protocols Program, aka Remain in Mexico, which was a great relief for the people who had been staying on the border for years, waiting for their asylum process. But Biden kept Title 42 in place, which tells you a lot. With this second Trump administration, I’m already exhausted. The cancellation of people’s CBP One appointments that had already been confirmed was a very hard pill to swallow.
People must have been in tears after waiting for so long, finally getting the appointment, only to have it canceled. That must have been really tough for you too. How did you handle it?
We have what we call a “circle of words.” It’s a form of self-governance at the center where the women get together and talk out whatever conflicts, troubles they are having. They also assign day-to-day cleaning roles and schedules. We called an emergency circle, and everybody was just devastated. A lot of people were crying. We just hugged one another and decided to give ourselves a few days to process the grief, and then keep going. Life won’t stop because of Trump. So then we started talking about how it is important not just to have a plan B, but also C and D.
For the families staying at the center, is there a plan B?
I think US citizens believe that migrants are mostly coming for economic reasons, but that has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Almost everyone we see now has been displaced by violence. They are really refugees. And for them the American dream is a safe place for themselves and for their children. So when they say they’re hoping for a better life, what they mean is being safe and keeping their children safe, and with the cancellation of CBP One that’s taken away the possibility of it.
Perhaps some people will stay in Tijuana, which has its own security problems. It’s also very expensive here because of gentrification. We’ve had a lot of US citizens move into Tijuana because they can’t afford the rent in San Diego. We pay $800 a month now just for a portion of this commercial plaza that was abandoned. We’ve had to build a makeshift kitchen and bathroom, and the place is still badly deteriorated. This is the first year that it didn’t rain inside of the building because we finally got the roof fixed.
President Sheinbaum has started a new program called Mexico Te Abraza (Mexico Embraces You) and has constructed repatriation centers for Mexicans who are deported. Have you been to any of the repatriation centers, and what do you think of the program?
They had a brief walk-through for the press, but we have not been allowed inside the centers. I think it’s long overdue from the Mexican government to have a program for deported people. So far, I don’t see a big change in the numbers. We’ve always had massive deportations, but they just didn’t get media coverage. Now that the spotlight is on this issue, ironically, it’s been productive. The Mexican government is making it easier for people to get their Mexican papers and providing them with services. People suffer a lot when they are deported. Sometimes they don’t even speak Spanish. They’ve spent their whole lives in the United States. They’re undocumented Mexicans in Mexico. Sometimes they speak with weird accents, and Mexican immigration targets them thinking they’re from Central America. We’ve had cases of Mexicans detained by immigration until they can prove they’re Mexican. It’s a huge adaptation process.
Right now, we’re just wondering whether the repatriation centers will fill up. We really don’t know yet. Uncertainty permeates everything right now.
What happens to the people who get deported who are not Mexican? Because the new repatriation centers are just for Mexicans, right?
Sheinbaum initially said she would not accept migrants from other countries. But Mexico has a long-standing tradition of serving U.S. interests. The shelters here could fill up with a lot of people stuck for a couple of years or more, like last time Remain in Mexico was in place during the first Trump administration, waiting for their asylum process. There are already encampments in Mexico City, but the government here won’t let people set up camps anymore, which I think goes against their autonomy. But shelters do provide a safer place, because the streets here are not safe at all.
Has there been a backlash against migrants arriving in Tijuana?
Tijuana is the least xenophobic and racist city in Mexico. Tijuana is a city of migrants, and when people come here, they’re always amazed to see different classes mixing in the bars and sharing public spaces. This was what I grew up believing, that we were very open. But then during the first Trump administration, I started hearing people in Tijuana using the same words as Trump about the migrant caravans, that they were criminals, and people became scared and started turning against the migrants. I became very disheartened by that. To see some people in my city turn against migrants, who were not criminals but the most vulnerable people you could imagine. It was really sad because I realized we had lost the battle for public opinion.
Is it hard when you try to imagine the future, and what you’re going to do next?
I try not to. I focus on what I have in front of me. If you look at the whole picture, we have a refugee crisis globally, and we see the Far Right gaining power. It’s very worrying. Fascism is taking over again. And if you look at that for too long, it’s too much. It takes away your hope and makes you feel like there’s nothing you can do about it, that it’s inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be that way, right? So I try to focus on what’s possible and on the little things where I can make a difference.