[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]he public gym in Tijuana where thousands of migrants from Central America are sheltering with hopes of entering the United States is a squalid mess.
Along pathways, basketball courts, a baseball diamond, and even in landscaped planters, camping tents are crammed into any available space. Each holds a handful of men, women, or children who have traveled more than 2,700 miles to reach TJ, this dynamic yet perennially hardscrabble border town.
The migrants, and the exhausted volunteers who are helping them, have fashioned more shelters with used tarps and blankets. Coils of rope crisscross the air at eye-level in all directions. Migrants rest and sleep upon blankets, plastic sheets, cardboard, or on the dusty ground and concrete.
A row of portable toilets, some with doors broken or missing, is surrounded by shallow pools of foul-smelling mud. Nearby, migrant men and boys in nothing but underpants cling together under open-air showers, just a few feet away from screaming traffic on Via Internacional, a road that runs parallel to the US-Mexico line.
And the camp is growing, clearly overwhelming local authorities, who move about with almost shell-shocked expressions behind medical face masks. Disease is spreading, local news reports said, including lice and respiratory infections. Four migrants in Tijuana have tested positive for HIV, and four have chicken pox, the local health secretary said. Thirty-four women are pregnant.