{"id":12347,"date":"2018-11-27T21:45:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T05:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=12347"},"modified":"2018-11-27T21:45:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T05:45:37","slug":"tijuanas-mayor-said-only-enough-resources-for-two-more-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=12347","title":{"rendered":"Tijuana\u2019s mayor said only enough resources for two more days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sounding an alarm, Tijuana\u2019s mayor said the city has only enough resources to support the Central American migrant caravan for two more days and beyond that, there is no guarantee of support.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will decide what to do when we get there,\u201d Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum said during a press conference Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<div class=\"trb_ar_bd\">\n<div class=\"trb_ar_page\" data-role=\"pagination_page\" data-content-page=\"1\">\n<p>Gastelum vowed not to divert tax dollars away from city services while asking Mexico\u2019s federal government to send more money and support. The outgoing administration of Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto leaves office Friday while incoming President Andr\u00e9s Manual L\u00f3pez Obrador starts Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe won\u2019t compromise the resources of the residents of Tijuana,\u201d Gastelum said. \u201cWe won\u2019t raise taxes tomorrow to pay for today\u2019s problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"trb_ar_sponsoredmod\" data-v-ntidd=\"1069627\" data-adloader-networktype=\"nativo\" data-withinviewport-options=\"bottomOffset=100\" data-load-method=\"trb.vendor.nativo.init\" data-load-type=\"method\">\n<div class=\"trb_ar_nt\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Tijuana\u2019s Treasurer, Ricardo Chavarria, said the city spends about 600,000 pesos a day supporting the migrant caravan or roughly $30,000.<\/p>\n<p>Money is tight right now because the city is near the end of the fiscal year and their top priority is not to cut municipal services, Chavarria said.<\/p>\n<p>Baja California officials said Tuesday that there were about 8,000 members of the Central American caravan in the state, roughly 6,800 in Tijuana and 1,200 in Mexicali.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of the caravan members in Tijuana sleep in an outdoor sports complex in the city\u2019s Zona Norte neighborhood. As more migrants arrive daily, space inside the makeshift shelter gets more crowded each day. There are more than 5,800 in the shelter as of Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Families set up tents anywhere they can find including under a set of bleachers, inside the dugout of a baseball diamond, among flower beds. About 180 more migrants arrived from Mexicali Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n<p>Many migrants are unsure of when they will be able to ask for asylum in the United States, how long they\u2019ll stay in the shelter, or where they\u2019ll sleep if it closes.<\/p>\n<p>Wilmer Pinto, 38, arrived in Tijuana with his wife and three children three days ago. He left Guatemala with $230 and ran out weeks ago. His family lives off the generosity of others, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Pinto, who said he fled Guatemala because gang members threatened to kill him after he refused to pay them an extortion fee, signed his name on a long informal list of people waiting to request asylum in the United States.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"trb_ar_sponsoredmod\" data-v-ntidm=\"1069629\" data-withinviewport-options=\"bottomOffset=100&amp;topOffset=1000000\" data-load-method=\"trb.vendor.nativo.init\" data-load-type=\"method\"><\/aside>\n<p>People on that list wait more than a month to go into the U.S. and Wilmer does not know what he and his family will do until their name is called.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is nothing to do but wait,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Other migrants aren\u2019t sure how long they\u2019ll be able to stay in Tijuana\u2019s makeshift shelter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a shelter so the city could ask us to leave at any moment,\u201d said Daniela Lara, 21, of Honduras.<\/p>\n<p>Lara said the migrants\u2019 situation has gotten more hostile since Sunday, when the U.S. shut down the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the nation\u2019s largest border entrance, after about 500 ran to the border.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the migrants tried to enter the border illegally and threw rocks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection while federal law enforcement officers shot non-lethal pepper gas into the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>Lara did not attend the Sunday\u2019s march.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m fleeing from violence so I didn\u2019t want to participate in violence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Resources are so tight in Tijuana that Gastelum said the city doesn\u2019t have enough money to pay for extra tarps for the migrants in preparation of this Thursday\u2019s expected rain.<\/p>\n<p>Local officials in Tijuana have identified multiple sites for a second shelter or somewhere the federal government can set up a migration center, but the current administration has not followed through, Gastelum said.<\/p>\n<p>Federal officials from the local branch of the National Institute of Migration declined to speak with reporters without the authorization of supervisors in Mexico City, which they did not have Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Gastelum said Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s lame duck status should not prevent them from taking immediate action on the migrant caravan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe pretext that they are leaving is not an excuse,\u201d he said. \u201cI, as a citizen, want answers from this government that I pay taxes to.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"trb_nls_c\" data-role=\"nls\" data-nls-successmsg=\"\" data-nls-options=\"esp=cm&amp;sn=article&amp;listid=2100182467&amp;newsletterEndpointUrl=https:\/\/api.nlr.tronc.com\/v3\/newsletters\/subscriptions&amp;newsletterApiKey=t2RIwsHk5p8RFZ0sPKLEr2M0Rh64DNz69BDRyGQa&amp;grecaptchaSiteKey=6Le8uQoUAAAAAGeL2_PBDQNuaI2g-cpZVhMxhCQa&amp;aid=2099944227&amp;allurl=http:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/?modal=newsletters\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sounding an alarm, Tijuana\u2019s mayor said&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12348,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12347\/revisions\/12348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}