Deportee camps loom

Photo: The Canadian Press

Mexicans fear deportee and refugee camps could be popping up along their northern border under the Trump administration's plan to start deporting to Mexico all Latin Americans and others who entered the U.S. illegally through this country.

Previous U.S. policy called for only Mexican citizens to be sent to Mexico. Migrants known as "OTMs" — Other Than Mexicans — got flown back to their homelands.

Now, under a sweeping rewrite of enforcement policies announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, migrants might be dumped over the border into a violence-plagued land where they have no ties while their asylum claims or deportation proceedings are heard in the United States. U.S. officials didn't say what Mexico would be expected to do with them.

The only consensus so far in Mexico is that the country isn't remotely prepared.

"Not in any way, shape or form," said the Rev. Patrick Murphy, a priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in the border city of Tijuana, which currently houses about 55 Haitian immigrants. They were part of wave of thousands who swarmed to the border in the closing months of the Obama administration in hopes of getting asylum in the U.S.

Tijuana was overwhelmed, and while the government did little, a string of private Christian groups pitched in to open shelters with improvised bedding, tents and sanitary facilities. Donated food kept the Haitians going.

Mexicans quake at the thought of handling not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a border region already struggling with drug gangs and violence.

"Just look at the case of the Haitians in Tijuana, what were they, seven or eight thousand? And the situation was just out of control," said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. "Now imagine a situation 10 or 15 times that size. There aren't enough resources to maintain them."

It's unclear whether the United States has the authority to force Mexico to accept third-country nationals. The DHS memo calls for the department to provide an account of U.S. aid to Mexico, a possible signal that Trump plans to use that funding to get Mexico to accept the foreigners.

"I hope Mexico has the courage to say no to this," Murphy said.