Los Angeles Times - 09.08.2019

A4 FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019 S LATIMES.COM

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Toni Morrison remem- bered:In the Aug. 8 Calen- dar section, an article about Toni Morrison said that “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” would have an encore showing Aug. 16 at Laemm- le’s Music Hall in Beverly Hills. The documentary is in fact running for a week at that theater, starting on Aug. 16.

FOR THE

RECORD

MEXICALI, Mexico —
Monica’s 4-year-old daugh-
ter urinates when she’s anx-
ious. Lately, she’s been uri-
nating a lot.
That’s because Monica
and her child fled Honduras
this winter to get away from
her physically abusive hus-
band. (Because she was a
victim of domestic violence,
she asked that her full name
be withheld.) Her goal was to
head north, ask for asylum
in the United States and live
with her mother in Louisi-
ana.
She didn’t expect to be
stuck for four months in
Mexicali, a sweltering Mexi-
can border city in the Sono-
ran Desert, where summer
temperatures routinely
reach 115 degrees.
She definitely didn’t ex-
pect to get kicked out of a mi-
grant shelter in the middle of
the night because her
daughter urinated on her-
self.
“I had never gone
through something like
that,” she said. “They humil-
iated me. They kicked me
out to the street.”
At first, Monica pleaded
with the shelter’s staff to let
her back in. But by 11 p.m.,
she gave up. Crying, she took
her daughter to a nearby
park and lay awake all night
as the child tried to sleep.
That shelter, Alfa Y
Omega, is one of more than a
dozen privately run facilities
in Mexicali. The shelters op-
erate with little government
oversight and little, if any,
public funding. They are be-
ing asked to care for a grow-
ing number of asylum seek-
ers being forced to wait in
Mexico for their immigra-
tion court hearings in the
U.S.
That combination, advo-
cates say, creates dangerous
conditions that leave some
of the most vulnerable mi-
grants in the world exposed
to exploitation, assault and
theft.
“Nobody’s watching, no-
body cares about Mexicali,”
said Kelly Overton, an
American who started a
nonprofit group called Bor-
der Kindness in Mexicali last
year when the Central
American caravans began
arriving at the U.S.-Mexico
border.
Overton chose to work in
Mexicali because most of the
attention at the time was go-
ing to bigger border cities
such as Tijuana or Ciudad
Juarez.
More than 350 people are
currently staying in Alfa Y
Omega. The shelter charges
migrants 100 pesos —
roughly $5 — a week for room
and board. They pack as
many as 50 men into a sti-
fling, windowless room with

no air conditioning and routinely withhold donations from migrants. Additionally, staff lock migrants in to pre- vent people who have not paid rent from leaving, according to a dozen people who have lived in the shelter. A tour of the shelter con- firmed the conditions that migrants described. Tem- peratures reached 110 degrees in the windowless room where 50 people slept that day. During a July 25 visit, a staff member at the shelter, who identified herself only as Araceli, said the shelter was able to feed migrants only once in the previous three days because it didn’t have enough money for food. However, Araceli denied that Alfa Y Omega charges migrants for shelter, saying it only collects voluntary donations. She also said it kicks out only people “who do not respect kids, use drugs or say bad words.”

Alfa Y Omega is not an outlier. Migrants reported similar conditions in other shelters around Mexicali, and Overton has seen them firsthand. “The norm here is that shelters charge people to stay,” he said. “Shelters charge people for donated goods, especially personal hygiene items like toilet paper and tampons.” Several migrants noted that a group of American volunteers visited Alfa Y Omega in February to take foot measurements. They returned a few weeks later with about 50 boxes of Nike sneakers. Nobody got new shoes. “I saw them in the shelter, but they never made it to our feet,” said a 42-year-old migrant named Juan who did not want his last name published for fear of retaliation. When migrants cannot afford to pay the 100 pesos, complain about conditions or do something that upsets the staff, they are kicked out, Overton said. Advocates say the United States is putting vulnerable migrants at risk by forcing asylum seekers to wait for their immigration court hearings in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Pro- tocols program. “The U.S. government claimed that people returned under MPP would be provided humanitarian support in Mexico, and that just hasn’t materialized,” said Kennji Kizuka, senior policy analyst of refugee protection for Human Rights First. “The Mexican government really doesn’t provide direct support to individuals who are returned.” The lack of stable hous- ing puts migrants in danger and makes them desperate to cross the border illegally or abandon their asylum claims, he added. Shelter operators defend the conditions by saying they are doing everything they can with no government support. At Alfa Y Omega, Araceli blamed President Trump

for sending migrants back to Mexico. Santiago Raygoza, who runs several shelters in Mex- icali, including one called Prodigal Son, says he charges migrants room and board because otherwise he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the monthly rent of about $760. Those who can’t afford to pay 100 pesos a week provide labor by cleaning the shelter and cooking meals. “They have to clean; they clean the bathrooms, cook the food,” he said. “They have to cover the services because we don’t have resources. These people don’t have a place to stay, and we have a shelter to help them.” Raygoza doesn’t have enough money to hire staff, including security. So migrants who have stayed at the shelter the longest end up running the day-to-day operation as unpaid workers. The state of Baja Califor- nia’s government provides little oversight of these private shelters, according to Gustavo Magallanes Cortes, the state’s director of migrant attention. “Ultimately, they follow their own rules,” he said. There are no state- or federal-run shelters in Mexicali or Tijuana, although there have been discussions of opening some in both cities, he added. Magallanes noted that shelters that register with the state and meet min- imum population require- ments receive state resources such as food, water, security and even coordi- nated visits with doctors and dentists. However, the lack of federal funding is pushing shelters to the brink. Some are struggling to pay for op- erating costs like keeping the electricity running or paying the rent, he said. “To date, the federal government has not given one peso to the shelters in Baja California,” he said. Shelters in Tijuana are also feeling the funding pres- sure. At Casa Del Migrante, 21% of the funding used to come from the federal government, but that has been reduced to zero, said the Rev. Pat Murphy. However, that shelter has reserves and still receives private funding. Shelters that don’t have the resources Casa Del Migrante has are more vulnerable to cuts, which is why they may have to charge migrants room and board to stay afloat. “They do their best, but it’s hard giving food to 11 to 150 people every day,” Mur- phy said. Casa Del Migrante does not charge migrants for shelter or food. It also hires staff and uses volunteers who are not migrants. Murphy said an associ- ation of other shelter operators in Tijuana organizes workshops for shelters in Ti- juana and Mexicali. Those workshops include a discus- sion on best practices like having security at the doors, not allowing guests to drink alcohol or use drugs, hiring staff or having a sufficient volunteer base, and budgeting for food and op- erating costs. Apart from poor conditions and withheld dona-

tions, other migrants reported more serious abuses, including physical violence, attempted sexual assault and theft. At Prodigal Son, a 20- year-old from Honduras was beaten and robbed for not being able to pay rent, according to both the man, who did not want to disclose his name, and the owner of the shelter. Shelter staff kept his phone and immigration paperwork after kicking him out. It wasn’t until Overton paid people at the shelter that they handed over the man’s phone and docu- ments. At that same shelter, Candelaria Pablo, a 45-year- old woman from Guatemala traveling with a 10-year-old daughter, said workers tried to sexually assault some of the women. “He gets into the rooms at night,” she said of one migrant worker. “He tried to violate the women.” Raygoza acknowledged that these incidents hap- pened in his shelter, but em- phasized that the people running the day-to-day operation are not employees. They are migrants who volunteer to work in the shelter instead of paying rent. He said that bad actors are kicked out immediately, but described these incidents as infighting among Central Americans. “They have problems among themselves,” he said. “It’s difficult for them to acclimate to our customs, that they shouldn’t rob or steal or spit on the ground,” he said. “These people are running from failed states and bring a lot of bad customs with them.” At Alfa Y Omega, four migrants said the woman who works in the shelter offers to help them withdraw money from the bank but keeps a high percentage of it as a charge. In one case, a woman said family sent her 1,000 pesos, but the female staff member gave her only 500, citing a fee to withdraw the money. Another migrant, named David, said his family sent him 1,000 pesos, but that she kept 300 as a service fee. “I didn’t do anything,” David recalls. “What could I say? My family was hungry and I needed the money.” Alfa Y Omega did not re- spond to questions about the allegations. When Overton arrived in Mexicali last year, he initially worked with the shelters. But when he found out what was going on, he decided to distance the nonprofit from most of the private shelters. “There’s nobody here as far as an organization or an institution that is hands-on that can help people,” he said. “The police are tired of them, the town is tired of them, and they are at the mercy of where they end up.” Border Kindness now runs a soup kitchen where migrants from any shelter can get a free meal twice a day. Additionally, the nonprofit began covering the op- erating costs of a shelter known as the Pink Shelter, named for its colored walls. That shelter doesn’t charge migrants room and board, Overton said.

Solis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The desperate face exploitation

CLEMENTA PEREZcarries daughter Jaily, 2, at the Prodigal Son shelter in Mexicali, Mexico. Residents who can’t afford the 100 pesos charged a week for room and board are required to help clean and cook meals.

Photographs byNelvin C. CepedaSan Diego Union-Tribune

Migrants at Mexicali

shelters seeking U.S.

asylum endure theft

and dire conditions.

By Gustavo Solis

SHELTERresidents sit outside for relief from the heat in Mexicali, where 115-degree days are common. Shelters lack air conditioning and often windows.

JERUSALEM — Hun- dreds of people attended Thursday’s funeral of an 18- year-old Israeli soldier who was found dead hours earlier with stab wounds near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the killing as a terrorist attack and vowed the killers would be brought to justice. Israeli troops raided a nearby Pal- estinian village, and the military said it was sending re- inforcements to the West Bank. The killing threatened to inflame tensions between Is- raelis and Palestinians just over a month before Israel’s parliament elections. In response to the incident, Ne- tanyahu’s nationalist allies called for further West Bank settlement construction and a heavy-handed response. The soldier was identified as 18-year-old Dvir Sorek from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, north of Jerusalem. He was a student at a pre-military Jewish seminary in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, south of Jerusalem. His body was found on the side of a road near the seminary. Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the soldier was neither armed nor in uniform when his body was found. He said the army was investigating the circumstances of his death and searching for suspects. As part of the searches, a column of Israeli jeeps en- tered the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Fajjar, a mile south of where the body was found. Soldiers blocked the road and searched homes. The military said it was calling up more troops to the West Bank in response to the incident. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Islamic militant group Hamas issued a statement praising the killing of the soldier. “We salute the hero fight- ers, sons of our people, who carried out the heroic operation which killed a soldier of the occupation army,” Hamas said. The Palestin- ian militant group Islamic Jihad also hailed the killing as “heroic and bold.” President Trump’s Mid- east negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, attacked Hamas’ statement, writing on his Twitter account that the militant group “chooses death & destruction over taking care of people they claim to lead.” Rabbi Shlomo Wilk, head of Sorek’s yeshiva, told Israel Radio that the student had gone to Jerusalem to buy presents for the school’s fac- ulty. Wilk said Sorek had called a friend and said he would return on time. “When he was late, we started to worry,” Wilk said. “Fairly quickly we under- stood that something wasn’t right and we got the police involved.” Sorek’s father, Yoav, is the editor of a Hebrew-lan- guage Jewish history maga- zine and the Shiloach Jour- nal of for Policy and Thought. Dvir was the grandson of a prominent re- ligious nationalist rabbi, Benjamin Herling, one of the forerunners of the settlement movement, who was killed by a Palestinian gun- man in 2000. Netanyahu visited the scene of the attack Thurs- day evening. Earlier, the prime minister said in a statement that security forces were “in pursuit now in order to capture the de- spicable terrorist and bring him to account.” Speaking at the inaugu- ration of new settlement homes in Beit El, north of Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel “will reach those who seek to harm us, we will strengthen our roots in our homeland.” President Reuven Rivlin said the security forces were “pursuing the murderers and will not rest until we find them.”

Israel

mourns

slain

soldier

Prime minister vows to capture the killers

in stabbing near

West Bank settlement.

associated press

Los Angeles Times - 09.08.2019

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