Caravan migrants stall in Tijuana, unsure of their next steps

Central American migrants moving towards the United States in hopes of a better life, near the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 17, 2018.

(Image credit: Guillermo Arias/Getty Images)

last updated 18 November 2018

Some of the Central American migrants traveling by caravan across Mexico toward the United States have reached the border city of Tijuana and stalled, uncertain of their next steps. Many have already been denied entry to the U.S. and are considering their alternatives, like accepting Mexico's offer of jobs and basic resettlement assistance.

"If we had work, we would stay. This has been very tiring," Orbelina Orellana, a mother from Honduras, told Reuters. "I cry a lot to not be able to feed them as I’d like," she said of her three children. "I just want an opportunity."

Complicating the decision is a newly hostile attitude toward migrants in Tijuana, which now has a conservative mayor who has argued "human rights should be reserved for righteous humans," a category from which he excludes the caravan migrants. Some Tijuana residents have scuffled with the migrants and plan to rally against their presence in the city Sunday.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.