More than 2,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Mexico's largest border city as the U.S. government speeds up processing to admit Ukrainians under humanitarian parole.
More than 2,000 Ukrainian asylum seekers are at the U.S.- Mexico border to ask for asylum. Many are held in facilities that once held Central American and Mexican asylum seekers years before.TIJUANA, Mexico — More than 2,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Mexico's largest border city and the pace continues to grow every day with hundreds of new arrivals as the U.S. government speeds up processing to admit Ukrainians under humanitarian parole.
A network of volunteers, mostly from churches and Ukrainian communities in the western United States, have set up a system to receive Ukrainians at the Tijuana airport, provide food, clothing and transportation to a makeshift shelter, hotels and the San Ysidro border crossing for processing. Ukrainian flags and signs welcome refugees as they exit the airport. Volunteers from the U.S. also set up a booth at the waiting area to register families and place them in the processing queue at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego. New arrivals can track progress of the line on their phones.
Bohashova left Kyiv with her mother on March 4 and arrived in Tijuana on April 5. Their journey took them to Lviv in western Ukraine, where the two crossed into Poland. They traveled to Germany, then to Spain, where they took a flight from Madrid to Mexico City. El Chaparral had been closed for nearly two years since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented border restrictions on travel, but CBP last week opened the facility solely to process asylum seekers from Ukraine.
"It was heartbreaking. And it was angering," said David Miramontes, a volunteer coordinator assisting Ukrainians in Tijuana. Baja California state officials estimate over 800 Ukrainians are staying at the sport complex, but the number is constantly in flux. As volunteers bus refugees to San Ysidro for processing, more constantly arrive to take their place.
Natalia Stepandak lives in Las Vegas, but she met up with a Ukrainian friend who lives in Los Angeles earlier this week. The two went grocery shopping and cooked all night, she said. The following morning they drove from Los Angeles to Tijuana to deliver a carload full of food. "We don't have something as big as the complex, but we do have facilities similar to the basketball courts, where we could take more people," she said."But we're hoping that with the process that the United States is implementing that won't be necessary."
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