During spring break, two Boston University students traveled to Tijuana, Mexico with Associate Professor of the Practice Shannon Dooling to report on the impacts of new immigration policies. The group focused specifically on how the change affected asylum-seeking processes among migrants in Tijuana.
Dooling was accompanied by junior Zenobia Pellissier Lloyd and graduate student Gabriel O’Hara Salini.
Pellissier Lloyd and O’Hara Salini were encouraged to pitch their resulting stories to the media outlets on campus, including The Daily Free Press, BUTV and WTBU Radio, Dooling said.
“They will also be assisting and contributing to the reporting that I produced for WBUR,” she said. “Which will likely be at least one digital story as well as a broadcast radio story.”
The group assisted Al Otro Lado, a volunteer organization that provides legal and humanitarian services for people sheltered at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Dooling previously traveled to Tijuana during the Trump administration in 2018, and on this trip, hoped to see “how things have changed a little bit in terms of the landscape” for asylum-seekers and people looking to migrate to the U.S., she said.
Pellissier Lloyd said her daily routine on the trip involved interviewing individuals in shelters and volunteers at the border, recording ambient sound for the audio portion of her media submissions and taking photographs.
She said she plans to co-write a narrative story with O’Hara Salini to be published in The Journalist, a magazine run by the BU Journalism Department.
Pellissier Lloyd was motivated to apply for the trip because of a border studies class she took last year within the BU Center on Forced Displacement and previous news stories she’s written.
“Going physically to Tijuana was a once in a lifetime opportunity to actually see these spaces with people that have become kind of like buzzwords and these highly politicized topics,” she said. “Being there physically, kind of put all those things in perspective.”
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions after his inauguration was to repurpose the CBP One Home Mobile Application. CBP was first introduced by the Biden Administration to allow asylum-seeking individuals sheltering at the U.S.-Mexico border to begin the process of obtaining legal status in the U.S. from their phones.
Even so, Pellissier Lloyd said the wait times could span several months to even obtain an appointment to finish the process.
“A few of the people that we spoke to had been waiting in Tijuana for six months to a year,” she said. “One of the people that we spoke to had an appointment set on Jan. 20, and she showed up at the port of entry and was told at the gate that her appointment was canceled, that CBP no longer existed.”
O’Hara Salini said he met individuals who were “escaping systematic violence” and have traveled “from all over just to have a chance to enter the U.S., because they feel it’s the only place that’s safe.”
While they wait to acquire asylum-seeking status in the U.S., they are stuck in shelters with no clear time frame, he said.
“Legal aid has changed because [people] are no longer applying for asylum. They’re just preparing their papers if [the border] ever opens up,” O’Hara Salini said.
O’Hara Salini explained that asylum-seekers are actively feeling the effects of the changing policy. Volunteer groups host weekly “know-your-rights” clinics to keep people informed about what is going on.
After Jan. 20 attendance at these clinics has been high as uncertainty around policy grows.
O’Hara Salini said the conditions in the shelter were often crowded, with many families and children living in the same quarters with all of their belongings for long periods of time.
“It’s a very humbling experience, because while you’re here in Boston, you see all these things … And you think you know a lot about it,” he said. “But when you get there … it does bring you a new perspective.”
The reporting trip served as a way for O’Hara Salini to not only witness what is going on first hand, but also to be able to share it. He said when people stop seeing the individuals affected by this policy change, and “start seeing them as numbers,” it can be dangerous.
The precarity of the current immigration laws has often left people feeling hopeless, he said.
“But at the same time, you can see people there still have this small grain of hope that things will get better,” O’Hara Salini said.
Zenobia Pellissier Lloyd wrote for The Daily Free Press from September 2022 to April 2023, and Gabriel O’Hara Salini currently writes for The Daily Free Press. Neither of them were involved in the reporting, writing or editing of this article.
