EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Mexican officials began preparing for the mass deportation of migrants as soon as they learned Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States.
Candidate Trump had made closing the border to illegal immigration and sending migrants already in his country packing back home. By the time he took office, Mexican officials began erecting massive tents in Juarez, Nogales and other border cities to house 2,000 to 5,000 deportees at a time as part of the Mexico Te Abraza (Mexico Embraces You) program.
But migrant encounters plummeted, preventing the administration from immediately removing large numbers of people crossing the border illegally. Due process and swamped immigration courts also slowed the Trump deportation impetus.
The massive white tents in Mexican border cities have remained mostly unoccupied, but the federal government has refused to close them. Until now.
Nogales Mayor Juan Francisco Gim said tents placed over municipal sports fields are already being taken down.
“I had promised the athletes I would lobby for this, and based on the numbers (of migrants), we could recover at least one of the fields,” Gim said at a Tuesday news conference in Nogales rebroadcast on social media. “I received authorization, and we will begin to take down the tent over the football field today.”
The mayor said talks with the federal government will continue to take down the remaining tents.
“President (Claudia Sheinbaum) said we only have to keep 200 beds, and we have that capacity and more” at other government and private shelters in Nogales, Gim said.
He said the Mexican government bought his argument that the community needs to recoup spaces so youths can practice sports, as well as that the low occupancy doesn’t justify the massive tents.
Gim said he and the Sonora state government are suggesting that the federal government use an empty industrial park in Nogales if the mass deportations materialize in the future.
“They can accommodate up to 500 people there, plus we have the (private) shelters like Juan Bosco, which also have the space,” the mayor said.
Gim said the placement of the tents severely damaged the sports fields and that he would ask the contractor who put them up to remediate the damage. “I am seeing to that directly with the Interior (Minister),” he said.
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