Tijuana's 'Tent City' Shelters Hundreds of US Deported Immigrants Michelle Garcia - Al Jazeera
go to original November 28, 2013

For three months, a tent city housing a mix of homeless, deported, and/or addicted people has taken up space in Tijuana's Plaza de la Constitución. (Erin Siegal McIntyre/Al Jazeera America)

TIJUANA, Mexico — There was a time when Javier Reyes conferred with architects about building plans, when a day's work meant constructing new homes for Californians near Bakersfield. But the world of bricks and plywood he once knew has been replaced by a sea of brightly colored tents. Now he uses his quiet authority to bring a semblance of order to an informal camp of homeless people, many of whom were, like Reyes, tossed out of the United States.

On a recent morning, a tension comes over the camp. A man grabs a woman from behind and pushes her to the crowd. "She's pregnant," someone yells. A security team — men who live in the camp — is dispatched to break up the scuffle. Meanwhile, a tall man with a thick mustache and heavy jacket saunters up to the table and slips a paper across the table where Reyes sits — another deportee from California on the streets of Tijuana searching for refuge.

The tent city is providing a temporary home to roughly 600 people. The featured amenity here is the Porta-Potty. Meal service arrives courtesy of activist groups; the food is handed out from the back of a pick-up truck and in chow lines. Many of the camp's residents stay here because their family remains in the United States and they have few other options. Some are stuck in the downward spiral — from breadwinner in the U.S. to vagrant in Mexico — that is all too common for deportees.

El Mapa, as the tent city is known, was born in a time of crisis. In early August, a team of federal, state and local agents raided the canal of the Tijuana River, known as "el bordo," which runs along the border with the United States. Hundreds of people who'd taken shelter there, many of them deportees, were evicted. Their lean-tos, foxholes and shelters, burrowed into the canal walls, were destroyed. Tijuana police told reporters in a statement that the operation was undertaken to protect the migrants and ensure safety.

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