Tijuana Officials Mandate Drug Treatment for Hundreds of 'El Bordo' Homeless Jean Guerrero - KPBS.org
go to original April 13, 2015

A woman who lived in a Tijuana drainage canal known as El Bordo receives treatment for her drug addiction at a rehabilitation center called El Cirad. (Katie Schoolov)

Listen: About a month ago, Tijuana officials placed hundreds of homeless people in rehabilitation centers, causing concerns about the quality and humaneness of the treatment they'll receive.

Hundreds of people who were living in makeshift homes in a Tijuana river canal are now in rehabilitation centers across the city. Most were deportees who turned to methamphetamine and heroin after losing hope of returning to the U.S.

The city government ordered their removal and rehabilitation en masse when heavy rains created dangerous floods in the canal about a month ago. Roughly 600 people were put into 12 rehabilitation centers during the storm, according to the mayor’s office. Officials had previously recruited 300 people for treatment. The federal government is sending funds and medical personnel from Mexico City to help the city government.

The unprecedented move is Tijuana’s latest response to its drug addiction problem, which government data shows is the worst in Mexico. Around 20 percent of residents in the city report using illegal drugs at some point in their lives. Substance abuse here has been fueled by a wave of U.S. deportations focusing on migrants who commit crimes, including drug violations.

Tijuana Mayor Jorge Astiazarán said his background in internal medicine motivated him to seek treatment for the people in the drainage canal’s encampment, known as El Bordo — Spanglish for border.

“Addictions are like diabetes or cancer,” he said at a news conference at Universidad Xochicalco, a college in Tijuana. “It’s an incurable disease, but it can be controlled.”

The canal is now empty of residents. Police and military vehicles drive back and forth, monitoring the area to make sure no one returns.

Read the rest at KPBS.org

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