Mexico is preparing for a mass return of the population, they are building temporary shelters

Mexican authorities have begun building huge tent shelters in Ciudad Juarez to prepare for a possible influx of deported Mexicans due to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of mass deportations. The temporary shelters in Ciudad Juarez will have the capacity to accommodate a thousand people and should be ready in a few days, said municipal official Enrique Licon.

“This is an unprecedented case,” Licon said Tuesday afternoon, as workers unloaded long metal couplings from tractor-trailers in large empty parking lots near the Rio Grande River, which separates the city from El Paso, Texas.

The tents in Ciudad Juarez are part of the Mexican government’s plan to set up shelters and reception centers in nine cities across northern Mexico.

The authorities will provide the deported Mexicans with food, temporary accommodation, medical care and assistance. in obtaining identity documents, according to a government document outlining a strategy called “Mexico Embraces You.”

The government also plans to prepare a series of buses to transport Mexicans from reception centers back to their hometowns.

Trump has promised to carry out the largest deportation in US history, with which he plans to remove millions of immigrants. However, an operation of this scale will probably take years and be very expensive.

Nearly 5 million Mexicans live illegally in the United States, according to an analysis by Mexican think tank El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) based on recent US census data.

Many are from parts of central and southern Mexico, which have been plagued by violence and poverty.

The Mexican government says it is prepared for the possibility of mass deportations. But immigrant rights groups fear that the combination of mass deportations and Trump’s immigration crackdown could quickly saturate Mexico’s border towns.

On Thursday night in Ciudad Juarez, about twenty soldiers were working on a tent shelter near a tall black cross. In 2016, Pope Francis held an outdoor mass there, warned of the humanitarian crisis and prayed for migrants. In the deepening darkness, the soldiers began to build a kitchen to feed the deportees.