Migrants in Tijuana Regret the Caravan

'I’m Done With the United States’

After fleeing tear gas shot at the U.S. border, Carlos González confessed confusion and second thoughts about the caravan that carried him to doorstep of his dream: life in the United States.

The 40-year-old corn farmer from Honduras, wearing a pink breast cancer awareness hat and an orange work vest, had hopped on the caravan of Central American migrants figuring it would facilitate his entry into the country. It set out from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Oct. 12 and for five weeks he could hope and dream—especially as the caravan pushed past police barricades and crossed through closed borders in Guatemala and Mexico.

But the U.S. border has proved impossible so far for the more than 7,000 migrants anxiously arriving in Tijuana, where they’re waiting in the squalor of a small baseball stadium-turned-tent city. It’s just a stone’s throw from the border they hope to cross, which many could not imagine would be so difficult.

“I thought it would be easy,” said González, who traveled north with his wife and two children, ages 4 and 3. He said his family was planning to sign up with Mexican officials for voluntary repatriation.

“We’re here alone, hungry, unprotected. My daughter is sick with diarrhea,” he said from a street by Tijuana’s El Chaparral border crossing, where he hoped to make a little money washing cars. “I don’t want to lose my kids, lose my life.”

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