‘We are trapped here’: Haitian asylum seekers says in Mexico

Tijuana, Mexico – Each morning, Samuel leaves the narrow, single-room apartment he deals with a dozen other Haitian asylum seekers in central Tijuana and wanders over to the temporary migrant camp that he used to call home.

Until last month, he had been quietly at El Chaparral, a sprawling migrant tent city near the US-Mexico border wall, alongside Haitians and asylum seekers from other nations, all serving to try to get into the United States.” As thousands of asylum seekers have run northward to the US-Mexico border in recent periods in hopes of entering the US, Haitians say they are facing a second layer of agony: anti-Black racism from police and other migrants in Mexico.

Thousands of migrants and asylum seekers have travelled up to Mexican border towns like Tijuana with hopes of receiving asylum in the United States.

Haitian asylum seekers were the bulk in El Chapparal in mid-2020, but as thousands of other wanderers gave Tijuana and took refuge in the camp, the last Haitian holdouts left the peaceful settlement.

Haitians say other asylum seekers are hurled racist vitriol at them, building an atmosphere that pushed Samuel and others to leave and take refuge in squalid apartments as well as shelters on the outskirts of the city instead.

“The discrimination is considered strong from other migrants, but even from Mexican organisations working in the camp,” said Arnold, a Haitian activist who has been documenting abuses against the community in Tijuana and delivers food and other aid to Haitian asylum seekers.

“Nobody wanted to share the food being placed with them [the Haitian camp residents],” he said, adding that he also received reports that an informal school run by citizens also held Haitian children from attending classes.

Arold, 32, who came to Tijuana four years ago with hopes of gaining asylum, said he also lives in fear of retaliation from police or local armed groups.