Migrant Youths Face Trip to Crowded Tijuana Jail : Tales of Beatings, Torture, Fights Greet Minors Returned by Border Patrol

Like dozens of other juveniles taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego each month, Francisco and his friend, Hector, were recently turned over to Mexican authorities here. And, like other unaccompanied minors, they say they were immediately placed in the overflowing Tijuana juvenile jail, where they spent three nightmarish evenings before securing their release by posting a “bail” of 50,000 pesos--about $22.

“It was horrible there,” Francisco, 16, a resident of the central Mexican state of Jalisco, recalled during an interview at a shelter here. “There were fights all the time. There was no room to do anything. We slept on the floor. The food was terrible.”

The case of the two youths is not isolated. Each year, hundreds of unaccompanied juvenile migrants arrested by U.S. immigration authorities and sent back to Mexico must endure time in Tijuana’s juvenile detention facility, which is wedged between the police department and adult jail on Avenida Constitucion downtown.

At the jail, the youths mix with accused juvenile criminals, including alleged rapists and murderers, and spend much of their days simply killing time, mostly in a cramped, rectangular “patio” where a few rays of sunlight penetrate through the chicken wire. On the cement floor, dozens of juvenile prisoners in ill-fitting clothing and shoes sit cramped like canned fish. Tijuana children know the jail universally as La Ocho, because of its location near 8th Street.

At the facility, there are few activities, few pastimes, and fights are commonplace, according to children interviewed and social workers and others who have visited. Designed for 40 children, the institution housed 125 minors recently, authorities acknowledged.

On the brick facade outside the juvenile jail here, a sign describes the facility as a center of “Orientation and Reeducation for Minors of Anti-Social Conduct.”

Rehabilitation Impossible

“There’s no possibility of rehabilitation there,” said Guillermo Alvarado, a Tijuana social worker who has headed an independent program assisting Tijuana’s street children. “It’s a jail for children with all the problems of an adult jail.”

The migrant youths must remain there--some up to two weeks, according to social workers--although they have committed no crime under Mexican law. While critics here have condemned conditions as scandalous, they are even more outraged that young migrants who have commited no infraction in Mexico must endure the place.

“These children shouldn’t be in a penal setting,” said Jose Luis Manzo, a Tijuana psychologist who visited the facility numerous times while gathering information on alleged torture of minors by Mexican authorities. “Because they are from the poorest sectors of society, because they have no political clout, the government doesn’t bother to act to help them.”

Adding to the outrage of critics is the fact that a modern new juvenile detention facility--complete with outdoor basketball courts and seemingly spacious dormitories--sits unused a few miles from downtown, apparently another victim of the Mexican economic crisis. Various funding and construction problems have delayed the opening of the new jail for almost a year, observers say; the new grounds are now overgrown with weeds. Most recently, the move was put off because of the lack of adequate fencing, according to Daniel Romero Mejia, who heads the juvenile facility here.

“We should be moving over there in a few weeks,” Romero said during an interview in his office, adjoining the juvenile facility, which is a Baja California state institution. “We can’t move in without secure fences.”

Many Pessimistic

But the move has been imminent for so long that many are pessimistic. “They’re probably waiting for the new president to inaugurate it,” said Alvarado. Mexico’s next president takes office next Dec. 1.

Even once the move is made to the new site, however, the migrants will most likely remain in the downtown facility. The new buildings, Romero said, will be reserved for those accused of crimes, the majority of those in custody; most being held are awaiting juvenile court proceedings.

Romero, 27, who has headed the juvenile facility for five years, defends the longtime practice of placing of the unaccompanied migrant minors in the facility after they have been returned by the Border Patrol. The alternative, he says, is to simply allow them to go free on the streets of Tijuana, where as many as 3,000 “street children” already reside.

“It’s true that they haven’t committed any crime in Mexico,” said Romero, who said every effort is made to care for the youths in the jail. “We recognize everyone’s right to attempt to better their lives by crossing the border . . . . But they might face greater danger on the streets.”

He acknowledged, however, that the migrants could be subject to “contamination” from the criminal element in the jail. Space constraints make it impossible to segregate accused criminals from the migrants, he said.

“You can only work with what you’re given,” said Romero, whose office bears photographs of his two young daughters in a jacket that proclaims, in English, “I love my Daddy.”

Jail Time Debated

Authorities hold the migrants for no more than a week before releasing them to their parents or legal guardians or arranging passage back to their home states, Romero said. However, social workers say that the migrant youths often spend as much as two weeks in custody, a period that can profoundly affect them, critics say.

Romero says the maximum stay for all juveniles--migrants and others--is about three months; youths with longer sentences or more complicated legal procedures are sent to the larger and better-equipped juvenile facility in Mexicali, he said. However, others say the three-month limit is far from fixed.

“We know of some cases where children were there for seven months and didn’t even know why,” said Manzo, the psychologist. Even for a short period, he said, spending time in such confines “can be very damaging. It can result in lower self-esteem, a fear of the police, a lack of confidence. It can last later in life.”

The issue of official treatment of children in custody here has been a contentious topic in Tijuana, one of the world’s great migration centers. The city is home to thousands of children who have become separated from their parents or adult guardians as part of the massive migratory flow that shapes the city. It’s not uncommon for a child here to explain that his father is in Los Angeles, working as an indocumentado, while his mother remains in their home pueblo, deep in the Mexican interior, and his brothers and sisters are scattered throughout Mexico and the United States.

Shelter for Children?

City officials here are grappling with the idea of creating a shelter for the hundreds of children, most of them migrants or the sons and daughters of migrants, who reside on the street, eking out a living through the sales of chewing gum and other articles, or by begging.

Last year, a human rights group created an international stir when it alleged that state and city police had systematically tortured children in custody, usually while seeking confessions from the youths. The methods used, the group charged, included beatings, imposition of electric shocks, and forcing children to breathe in carbonated water by spraying it up their noses while they were tied up.

The alleged torture occurred at various police stations; none took place at the juvenile jail, according to independent human rights investigators, who called for an impartial investigation. However, children were taken by the police from the juvenile facility, tortured elsewhere, and then returned, the investigators said.

Like police officials here, Romero called the torture allegations unsubstantiated. He also denied charges that guards at the facility beat the children. However, he acknowledged that fights among the youths are not uncommon; he said no serious injuries have resulted. The jail, he noted, is staffed by five guards, five psychologists and three social workers. Two doctors make regular visits, and children are allowed to contact lawyers and their parents, he said.

Children Tell of Beatings

Children interviewed said beatings by guards were not unusual. More likely to be involved in beatings, however, were other youths, including older teen-agers whom authorities rely on to help keep the peace and who tend to dominate, they said. In this place where possessions are few, disputes frequently erupt over shoes and other articles of clothing, children said. Those with access to some funds can pay employees to bring them food, clothing and other needs, according to children and social workers.

“When there were fights, the guards and older ones would applaud,” said Victor, a 15-year-old migrant who spent three nights at the facility earlier this year along with his friends, Francisco and Hector. “They (other youths) tried to take all of my clothes.”

The three, interviewed at a shelter here after their release, said they were released after posting the 50,000-peso “bond” with a lawyer. It was all the money Victor said he had left after a week in San Diego. Romero denied that the migrants are required to post bail, except if they have criminal charges pending against them.

At the juvenile hall one recent afternoon, Fernando, a strapping 17-year-old who was working as a kind of trusty, said he helps keep the peace in the facility. “If you follow the rules, there’s no problem for you here,” said Fernando, a former San Diego resident who said he was in custody for possession of heroin and had been living on his own since the age of 7. “If you don’t follow the rules,” added Fernando ominously, “you can have problems.”

Overcrowding at Jail

The 12-year-old juvenile jail consists of six bedrooms, where a reporter recently counted 39 beds, bunk-style. There are no individual cells. Romero said the place was meant for use by 40 youths; there were 120 there when a reporter visited recently. Many are from broken families. By all accounts, many children sleep on the floor, with blankets, until wake-up time at about 6 a.m.

On one recent occasion, a 10-year-old boy, Rigoberto, an accused bank robber, was walking around barefoot. Romero said youths under the age of 12 are supposed to be sent to other facilities, but he acknowledged that there sometimes wasn’t space elsewhere. Clothing was also occasionally in short supply, Romero conceded.

At the facility, a separate wing houses juvenile girls, usually fewer than 10 at a time, Romero said. In the girls’ section, social workers say, a leaky roof led to the frequent drenching of beds during the recent rainy season.

In the boys’ wing, walls were painted a washed-out orange and pink; fluorescent bulbs, some no longer working, provided a minimal cloudy gray light from the ceiling. There was no door to the bathroom; the stink was noticeable. The plastic dishes used by the children for their simple meals were washed in a space used for morning bathing, children said. One room, complete with a blackboard, is used for official talks, on issues such as drug addiction and the dangers of venereal disease, as well as for watching television, Romero said.

“We try to stress prevention,” Romero said of the officially sponsored talks.

Cramped ‘Patio’ Area

A short corridor leads to the “patio,” a rectangular-shaped room about 80 feet long, its ceiling of wires and metal bars open to the sky. During the daytime, the children sit on the floor here, their knees touching, waiting for the time to pass. Some read comics; others string jewelry out of cheap beads and nylon string. There is a basketball backboard on the wall, but no rim or net; in any case, there would be no room to play in the cramped space. When a visitor entered the doorway to the patio, the children besieged him with requests for paper and pens, imploring him to get messages to friends and relatives.

In the past year, a Roman Catholic group in Tijuana has visited the jail and, with the consent of authorities, has removed dozens of migrant children who are not accused of any crimes and provided them with bus tickets to return to their homes. However, new migrants arrive at the jail almost daily. Last year, 1,721 minors were returned to Mexico by U.S. immigration authorities in San Diego, according to the Mexican consul in San Diego, which interviews the youths while in custody.

On a recent morning, a group of nine youths arrived at the Tijuana juvenile facility after having been returned by the U.S. Border Patrol. Among them was Everardo, an 11-year-old native of the Mexican interior state of Guerrero. Like most, Everardo had only a few years of schooling.

Everardo, a lively boy with a shaved head (because of lice), said he, his mother and two sisters had emigrated to Tijuana a month before. Looking for a change of scenery, he said he and several other youths had entered the United States a few weeks before through the border canyons, hoping to reach the Los Angeles neighborhood of Granada Hills--”where all the rich people live,” he said, adding that his aunt also resides there. However, Everardo said he never got beyond San Diego, where he did odd gardening jobs and earned some change while staying with a man who befriended him. He said he was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol the week before.

Another boy in custody, Ramiro, 13, a native of the state of Michoacan, made it as far as National City, where he said he spent two weeks with a relative before being picked up by the Border Patrol.

Wants ‘to Go Back’

“I thought the United States was very beautiful,” said Ramiro. “I loved riding a bicycle and a skateboard. I want to go back.”

Another child, Miguel, 15, said he spent his two weeks in San Diego sleeping in Balboa Park, looking for work as a gardener. “It wasn’t bad,” he said.

Alejandro had more luck. An inquisitive youth of 15, Alejandro explained in an interview earlier this year how he had crossed the border at Nogales, Ariz., and managed to hop a freight train to Los Angeles, where, he said, his father resides. A curly-haired native of Nogales, Sonora, Alejandro is one of five children.

Did his mother object to his decision to leave home? “I told her I would help her, send back money,” Alejandro said, smiling.

Once in Los Angeles, Alejandro said, he worked alongside his father at a taco shop for six months, earning about $40 a week. “I was becoming an American,” he said proudly, sprinkling in some English words to emphasize the point.

That ended, he said, when he was arrested by U.S. authorities as an illegal alien. Like so many others, he wound up in the children’s jail here.

What does he want to do with his life?

“I want to be a lawyer,” he said with a big grin. “I want to earn a lot of money and help my mother.”