Mexico’s new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) promised in his inauguration speech to bring to bring his country into a new era, ending corruption, bringing about a new prosperity, and improving the lives of all. Both before and after his inauguration he has spoken out on the need for a form of development in Central America that would reduce migration caused by unemployment and poverty. He has proposed a “Marshall Plan” for Central America, promising that Mexico would put $30 billion into an economic development program. While all of this may be well and good for the future, in the meantime it appears that both the United States and Mexico are engaged in the studied neglect of immigrants who have arrived at the border seeking asylum from the violence of their homelands.

Today about three thousand migrants seeking asylum in the United States are at the border in Tijuana, Mexico in temporary shelters without adequate bathroom facilities, without readily available drinking water, and in conditions that have led to widespread illness among those who arrived in the largest migrant caravans during the last month. Many of the migrants are children, and though the Mexican government, the Catholic Church, and several NGOs have attempted to provide assistance, they have been hard-pressed to meet the needs of the migrants.

US immigration authorities have been accepting about forty asylum applications a day, a policy clearly intended to frustrate the migrants and drive them back home. Tijuana’s mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum, a conservative politician who promises to make Mexico great again, has called the migrants an invading horde who are not welcome in his city. His rhetoric has helped to mobilize xenophobic demonstrations by Mexicans against the Central American migrants. The Tijuana mayor has allowed conditions to deteriorate so that the migrants will accept the federal government’s offer to put them on buses and send them back home, an offer that thousands have already accepted.