On Holy Thursday, staff at Tijuana’s Casa del Migrante knelt before recently deported migrants and washed their feet. The Catholic ritual, drawn from the Gospel account of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, took on pointed meaning this year. Shelter directors from three of the city’s largest Tijuana deportee shelters used the ceremony to issue a blunt warning: government aid programs cover the first hours after deportation, but nothing addresses what comes next.
One participant had been deported from Los Angeles just three days earlier. He called the ceremony “a beautiful encounter with God.” Another deportee, returned after attending an immigration hearing in the United States, was less gentle. “You feel humiliated when you worked hard over there to be OK,” that person said. “And unfortunately, they kick us out unjustly.”
Tijuana Deportee Shelters Report Mothers Separated From Children
The ceremony brought together representatives from Casa del Migrante, Instituto Madre Asunta, Refugio Salesianos Don Bosco, and the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante. Together, these organizations form the backbone of Tijuana’s shelter network for deportees and displaced people along the border.
Vitalina Pietrobiasi, director of Instituto Madre Asunta, said the majority of recent arrivals at her shelter are mothers who were separated from their children during deportation. Her facility currently houses 32 people, including women, children, deportees, and people displaced by violence. Many arrive with severe depression, she said, and land in a country they barely know.
“Most of the deportees are mothers who come having left their children behind,” Pietrobiasi said. “They arrive with deep depression, a state of separation, leaving their children and coming sometimes to a country that to them is a foreign country.”
The biggest unmet needs, she said, are psychological care and employment access. Bureaucratic delays in obtaining Mexican identity documents block deportees from legal work. Without a CURP (Mexico’s national ID number) or an official birth certificate, a deportee cannot open a bank account, sign a lease, or get hired formally. That process can take weeks or months, leaving people in limbo at shelters or on the street.
México Te Abraza Covers Arrival but Not Recovery
Mexico’s federal government launched the “México te abraza” (“Mexico embraces you”) program to receive deportees at border crossings. The program offers medical screening, short-term financial support, and basic orientation. But shelter directors and advocates say the program ends where the real crisis begins.
Macrina Cárdenas, coordinator of the Coalición Pro Defensa del Migrante, was direct in her criticism. “These benefits do not rebuild lives,” she said. “They do not return the years of work, the fractured family bonds, or recover the businesses and careers that were interrupted. The emergency programs attend to the arrival, but they do not accompany the grief, nor do they repair the soul.”
Raúl Ochoa, director of Casa del Migrante, said deportees arrive with almost no understanding of what comes next. “When they arrive, they come with a lot of unknowing about what follows for them,” Ochoa said. “It is from our spaces that we take charge of guiding all of these processes, because when they are released, they are not properly oriented.”
Casa del Migrante, run by the Scalabrinian missionaries, has operated in Tijuana’s Zona Norte since 1987. It sits about a 10-minute walk from the El Chaparral border crossing, in one of the neighborhoods most directly affected by deportation flows. The shelter has a stated capacity of around 120 people and provides meals, legal guidance, and job referrals. But demand routinely outpaces those resources.
Shelter Strain Concentrated in Zona Norte and Zona Río
Tijuana’s shelter network is concentrated in and around Zona Norte and the neighborhoods near the Zona Río. Casa del Migrante sits on Calle Galileo in Colonia Castillo. Instituto Madre Asunta, which serves women and children, operates about three kilometers southeast. Refugio Salesianos Don Bosco is nearby as well. These shelters serve as the first stop for people expelled through the San Ysidro and El Chaparral ports of entry.
If you live or spend time near the border zone, you have likely noticed the increased presence of recently deported people in Zona Norte and around the Chaparral pedestrian crossing in recent months. Shelter directors say the current pace of deportations, combined with reduced humanitarian aid, is pushing more people outside shelter walls entirely. Cárdenas described conditions that “prioritize security over respect and human dignity.”
Pietrobiasi called current migration enforcement “unjust” and said the policies “benefit many but do not benefit the lower class and the most vulnerable.” She asked people to consider how they would want to be treated if they were the ones being deported.
The shelter coalition has not announced a next public event, but Ochoa said the organizations will continue pressing for longer-term federal support beyond the initial “México te abraza” intake. The foot-washing ceremony was first reported by Punto Norte.