The government of Mexico is planning to open twenty-five shelters for Mexican citizens deported by the incoming Trump administration. The shelters will be opened by Trump’s inauguration on January 20, according to comments by Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar at a press conference Monday reported by Border Report.
The temporary shelters will hold about 500 each, totally 12,000. Some will house single men, others will house unaccompanied children, women and family units.
In the weeks after the November 5 election, President-elect Trump sparred with Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum over his threat to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada over the failure of those governments to stop migrants and drugs from coming into the U.S.
The announcement Monday by Gov. Marina del Pilar is a sign Trump is winning the battle with Sheinbaum.
Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda announced the Mexican government will open 25 new shelters to house deported migrants.
During a meeting with reporters on Monday in Tijuana, Ávila Olmeda said they are taking President-elect Donald Trump’s threats of mass deportations seriously, adding that six of the shelters are supposed to be set up in the city of Tijuana with two others in Mexicali, Baja’s capital city.
“This is a strategic plan to accommodate exclusively people who get deported after January 20,” she said.
…The facilities will only house Mexican migrants for a few days before they are sent to their hometowns in the interior of Mexico, Ávila Olmeda said.
Trump’s border czar in waiting, Tom Homan, has been making media appearances this month making clear Trump’s priorities: “Secure the border, run a deportation operation and find these children, 340,000 missing (migrant) children.” Homan has said that the priority for deportations will be aliens with criminal records, aliens with deportation orders, gang members and national security risks. Homan has also warned migrants not in those categories that they will be taken into custody for deportation proceedings if they are caught up in raids for targeted criminal aliens.
Tom Homan: “President Trump gave me 3 priorities, right? Secure the border, run a deportation operation, and find these children—340,000 missing children. It’s going to be a tough job because of what this administration has done.” pic.twitter.com/zEXTga4iai
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 24, 2024
Video of the press conference by Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda (in Spanish, Q & A about the migrant shelters starts at around 29 minutes.)
NBC News reported Homan’s comments on Trump’s priorities in an article published earlier this month (excerpt):
Homan, who was frequently asked during his appearances to explain how and with whom the repatriations will begin, echoes one of the few details of the plan that Trump has offered publicly himself: The deportations will begin with undocumented migrants who pose threats to either national or public security.
“President Trump has made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first and that’s what the focus would be,” Homan said of the deportation plan in an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” program on Nov. 11. “There’s thousands of gang members, illegal alien gang members we’re going to be looking for. Now, I’m going to say if you’re in the country illegally, you shouldn’t feel comfortable, absolutely not. I won’t feel comfortable.”
“We have ways of finding people,” he said in a separate interview on the network’s “Ingraham Angle” on Nov. 20. “I’m not going to explain it here on national TV because of law enforcement sensitivity, but we will find many of these folks. They will be arrested, they’ll be detained, and they will be removed.”
