Tijuana mayor declares migrant crisis, asks UN for aid

A man carries a girl on his shoulders at a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. Several thousand Central American migrants arrived in Tijuana last week more than a month after leaving Honduras in a caravan. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)

TIJUANA, Mexico — The mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city and says that he has asked the United Nations for aid to deal with the approximately 5,000 Central American migrants who have arrived in the city.

Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum says that the Mexican federal government has provided little assistance and he is not going to commit the city’s public resources to dealing with the situation.

Gastelum said on Grupo Formula radio Friday that Tijuana does not have the necessary infrastructure to adequately attend to the migrants.

On Thursday, his government issued a statement saying that it was requesting help from the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Gastelum says: “I am not going to spend the money of Tijuana (citizens).”