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In February 2017, Guadalupe Olivas Valencia, a Mexican man in his 40’s, committed suicide while jumping over a bridge in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego, California.
The suicide occurred just minutes after Olivas Valencia was deported for the third time to the United States. Figuratively, he jumped up and grabbed a plastic bag given to him by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to carry his belongings, just as CBP does with deportees.
Now, almost five years later, US border standards continue to claim lives – and Tijuana continues to be a threat.
Joe Biden’s government has just reinstated the so-called “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) – terrorist policies of the Donald Trump era that led Tijuana and other Mexican border cities to become targets of US asylum seekers.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2019, the MPP created “unprecedented” that “would help bring people back to a safer and more secure place … to receive the security they need.”
True, true, the system only made vulnerable people at greater risk, as border-bound refugees were forced to fight kidnappings, kidnappings, sexual assaults, and threats – in other words, the same race. a place where many of them once fled.
All of the planning was very bad, to be sure, based on how the US was already known to help bring about the physical and economic violence that makes rural areas uninhabited – from Honduras to Haiti and beyond.
As the MPP program embraces new life, the lives of people traveling to Tijuana remain on the line.
The coronavirus has given the US government an additional reason to expel asylum seekers from international law – just as US citizens are allowed to cross the US-Mexico border as many times as they want, whether vaccinated or not.
And yet, with the plague and MPP aside, the US has been slowly moving away from the point of survival. The website of the American Immigration Council states that, although U.S. law clearly states that anyone “present in the United States or ‘arriving’ at the border should be given access to security”, CBP officials at the southern border. and Mexico “has converted thousands of people arriving at ports for security, combined with ‘metering’ systems.
The practice began in 2016 “mainly at the San Ysidro port port”, the border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego.
I went to Tijuana in November this year and received a personal US tour behind the immigration camp, with the help of a long-time immigration activist in Tijuana who is often referred to as Cris.
Commenting on the ongoing “violation of the law” in the US on security issues, Cris emphasized that what the asylum seekers were waiting for at the border for security was “impossible” even five years ago – and that its stability reflected how “many laws are being violated in public” ( and limits).
After passing the Tijuana “Monumental Arch”, which is at the entrance to the central region, Cris explained that the monument is a symbol of corporate capital which – due to “free trade” agreements – is allowed to climb the US-Mexico border asylum. applicants remain confined below.
Appropriately, Cris said, there was a “Welcome to Tijuana” sign at the bottom of the arch, but it was dropped exactly on the day the human rights group set up a movement to relocate to the city. Instead, it was replaced by a larger TV.
Our trip to Tijuana also included a refugee camp in El Chaparral near the border, tentmakers’ tents, which had just been encamped by government officials, prompted the following quote from a San Diego camper Reader: “They are. that we are dead. ”
The idea of the same oppression may not have been supported by the helicopter that Cris said was bringing the memory of November 2018, when U.S. law enforcement agencies and law enforcement agencies launched a tear gas canister rally on San Ysidro.
How is it possible to protect vulnerable people?
The tears came just days before the US, Mexico, and Canada signed a new, free trade agreement to allow money, you know, to continue growing.
After crossing El Chaparral, Cris and I walked across a bridge into San Diego – near where Guadalupe Olivas Valencia committed suicide in 2017.
On the bridge, we spoke with a middle-aged Mexican man in Michoacán who had lived in Tijuana for four years after being deported to the United States and spoke to us mainly in English and American dialects.
Although he was often dedicated to selling flowers made from palm branches, he had now made yarn designs, and he gave me a pink and blue item with a ring with an extension. I asked him what it was, and he laughed: “Who knows”.
He was regularly detained, he told us, by the police in Tijuana, who, despite being part of the methamphetamine and other drug dealers, were not afraid to arrest people – especially asylum seekers and deportees – for drug dealing. errors.
Each incarceration lasted 36 hours, which naturally made it difficult for him to do certain things in life.
As Cris and I made our way back from the bridge to the valley, Manu Chao’s song “Welcome to Tijuana” came to mind, with his chorus: “Tequila, sexo y marijuana”.
And while the lyrics may sound strange, to say, “Suicide, barns, and the abolition of human rights”, another line of the song is true for many immigrants: “Bienvenida a la muerte” – “Welcome to death” .
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Al Jazeera.
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