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Migrants in Reynosa to be relocated to baseball field near landfill

Migrants in Reynosa to be relocated to baseball field near landfill
2 years 9 months 3 weeks ago Friday, December 10 2021 Dec 10, 2021 December 10, 2021 10:02 AM December 10, 2021 in News - Immigration / Borderwall

Thousands of migrants continue to camp out in the streets of Reynosa, but after several months of negotiations, the city has decided on a place to relocate them.

Baseball fields just one mile west of the current migrant camp in Reynosa will soon be home to nearly 2,000 people.

Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, director of the Sidewalk School, a nonprofit that provides resources for asylum seekers, does not think the park is the safest option for the migrants.

"Right now as we speak, they could be building,” Rangel-Samponaro said. “They could be building the wall, doing the bathrooms and the shower, but as you can see  nothing is being built."

Rangel-Samponaro says the city hasn't started getting the place ready for people to live in. A Tamaulipas state official says the city will be in charge of moving migrants by bus to the new camp site.

Since migrants began living in the park near the Hidalgo bridge, a limited number of people would end up at the Senda de Vida Migrant Shelter to get a humanitarian parole to cross into the U.S. Now, migrants will be living on fields located next to an open-air landfill in a poor neighborhood in one of the most dangerous cities in the state, especially for migrants.

Rangel-Samponaro believes there's a lack of interest from the city and the Mexican federal government to prepare a place for migrants to stay in.

"We could've been doing this months ago,” Rangel-Samponaro said. “Everyone knew this was coming.”

Just a few blocks away, the Sidewalk School will be renting part of a church's property in order to keep migrant families, children and Black asylum seekers safe behind walls.

Rangel-Samponaro says she tried to negotiate with the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas in Reynosa to try and use their gymnasium, just like the state used the same facility at the beginning of this year, but she says the university did not want to negotiate that option.

Representatives for the university and the city of Reynosa were not immediately available for comment on this story.

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