In July last year, François Andrelie had her first ultrasound examination at Salud Digna, a clinic in downtown Tijuana, Mexico, that conducts tests at popular prices. A small-built 34-year-old Haitian woman, Andrelie was in the third month of her first pregnancy at the time. When I went to visit her the next day, at a small apartment that she shares with her boyfriend and two other Haitians, she spoke of being “happy but also a bit sad.” “I live a life that I do not like,” she said. “When I was young I thought I could give everything to my son when this time came.” She would like to become a doctor, and return to Haiti, but she knows that the chances of either happening are slim.
Andrelie left her hometown, Port-au Prince, a year after a severe earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010. By the end of 2016, after living for some time in the Dominican Republic—where she received a diploma in accounting—and Brazil, Andrelie arrived in Tijuana, along with thousands of other Haitians. The town on the Mexico-United States border was in the midst of a crisis at the time: in September 2016, the Obama administration restricted the entry of Haitians to the US. These restrictions increased following the election of Donald Trump in the United States in January 2017. According to Soraya Vazquez, a lawyer and activist based in Tijuana, approximately 8,000 Haitians were stranded in Tijuana between September and December 2016. Many of them obtained a permanent work permit, aware that if they tried to cross the Mexico-United States border illegally, they would very likely be arrested and deported to Haiti. At the end of August 2017, according to data provided by the Instituto Nacional de Migración in Mexico, 1,425 Haitians remained in Tijuana and 1,224 settled in Mexicali, another city on the border.
The shelters in the city, unprepared for such large numbers, filled quickly between September and December 2016. Many evangelical churches with poor infrastructure were converted into reception centres. The city responded to the emergency by establishing a humanitarian aid committee guided by Vazquez, which aimed to organise civil society action and help migrants find permanent homes. Around the same time, Ximena Rojas and Bianca Tema, decided to help pregnant Haitian women by providing midwife services and collecting donations for medical costs through social media. Although Haitians have the option of visiting the General Hospital in Tijuana, which assists those who cannot afford health coverage, the facilities are often ill-equipped and women have complained of obstetric violence.
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