Tijuana Mayor Unloads on Caravan Organizers

Tijuana Mayor Unloads on Caravan Organizers

 

BY RICK MORAN DECEMBER 1, 2018

CHAT 93 COMMENTS

 

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum has seen his city torn apart by the migrant caravan and city coffers drained. He told Fox News that he is going to be forced to cut aid money to the migrants living in a makeshift tent city unless he gets federal assistance.

He also wants the organizers of the caravan arrested.

Meanwhile, conditions for the migrants in the tent city encampment worsened overnight with heavy winds and rain – flooding overcrowded spaces, leaving wet clothes, sleeping bags and litter strewn about an unsanitary and inhumane existence.

Efforts were underway to move some of them to a new location because of reports that more migrants were making their way to Tijuana.

Mayor Gastélum blames the organizers for whom he cannot identify. He said they should be held accountable. He said the leaders of the caravan should face criminal charges.

“Those are the real criminals because they're dealing with the lives of people,” he says.

Hope now rests on a new Mexican administration when Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador takes office as Mexico’s new president on Saturday.

Gastélum has a message for the incoming president.

“It's problem he must solve," he said, "as soon as he gets into office.”

Those organizers have decided to up the pressure on the U.S. by planning a march to the border by migrants.

Leaders among the migrant caravan in Tijuana, Mexico are distributing flyers in an attempt to organize a march to the border Saturday morning, according to the city's mayor.

Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum said he has asked Mexican federal police and Mexican immigration authorities to do whatever is necessary to stop the group from forcing Customs and Border Protection to shut down the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

Citing an economic study, Mayor Gastélum said a Sunday incident that forced an hours-long closure of the port, one of the world's busiest land border crossings, cost his city 129 million pesos, or roughly $6.3 million, in revenue.

According to Jason Wells, executive director of the San Ysidro, California Chamber of Commerce, there was an estimated one-day loss of $5.3 million for the more than 700 businesses that are members of the chamber.

How shameful is it to use hungry, desperate people as props in the organizers' little kabuki play? This kind of street theater is very popular on the Left, but using migrants to make a point, even though there is a potential for violence, is sickening.

Mexico has opened another tent shelter for the migrants, but it's already filling up as more and more people trickle into Tijuana. The way this is going, it's not going to end well for the migrants, for the U.S., or for Mexico.