I met Franco standing outside the migrant shelter in Tijuana when I was planning to leave for the day. He clocked my white skin and media lanyard and called out to me in English. I stopped and said hi.
Franco's from El Salvador; he crossed the border into the US for the first time 20 years ago, spending the subsequent years living in California. He had a relationship with a woman, they had a daughter. One day he was taken from his home and deported back to El Salvador.
Like so many who join migrant caravans, Franco is in Mexico right now because he's trying again to get to the US. He wants to see his daughter, to have some chance of making enough money to support a family. The Mexican government has granted him a humanitarian visa for Mexico and the El Salvadoran consulate has provided identification papers.
After a couple of days living in the migrant shelter Franco met Marta, who runs the tiendita (little shop) two blocks up. The shop sells bottled drinks and snacks and serves cooked lunches — fried chicken, beans, rice, and salad. It's part of a three-storey building which is a family home with many rooms.
Marta's young great-grandchildren are the fourth generation to live there, and they play in the courtyard with water pistols and tricycles as various household and community members move in and out. Soon Franco was living in the family home too, lodgings he pays for by helping cook chicken and clean the store. 'This is my family, here, now,' he tells me. 'They will help me until I'm reunited with my family.'
'We're all equals, we all have red blood,' says Marta when I interview her. 'For me, anyone who comes here from another country is welcome.'
That day, President Trump visited McAllen, Texas (across the frontera from Reynosa, Mexico) to declare further measures against any who would try and cross the border without prior approval. Mexico and the US had already agreed that asylum seekers are to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed in the US — a wait that is likely to be many months.
"This, for all their bluster, is what anti-migrant politicians miss: try as they might, the movement of people will happen as long as life itself does."
Of the numbers who arrived in Tijuana with the caravan in November, at least 1300 returned to their home countries of