At the border, a shelter for -- and by -- women

Anyone crossing the U.S.-Mexico border faces a journey fraught with violence and danger.

But for women and children, that journey is even more treacherous. Not only are many fleeing violence at home — including gender-based violence — they also experience higher rates of violence en route. Torture, mutilation, sexual violence, femicide,disappearances, and additional health complications are common occurrences for female migrants making their way north.

That danger is amplified for the thousands of girls living in makeshift camps and tent cities along the U.S.-Mexico border without protection or accompanying support. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Kids In Need of Defense, “[u]naccompanied children are especially vulnerable to sexual violence, human trafficking, and exploitation by cartels and other criminal groups.”

Over the last few years, a group of Muslim women has stepped in to meet their needs in unique ways. Albergue Assabil (“the Shelter of the Path”), the first Muslim shelter along the U.S.-Mexico border, has been in operation since June 2022 under the leadership of Sonia Tinoco García, founder and president of the Latina Muslim Foundation. According to staff, the shelter served nearly 3,000 migrants in its first two years of operation. Many of those migrants have been women, attracted to the shelter because of its separate men’s and women’s facilities and the fact that Albergue Assabil is a female-led shelter.

And it’s not only Muslim women finding sanctuary under the shade of the shelter’s blue dome; there have also been other female immigrants looking to García and her team for assistance as they make the perilous journey north.

BorderLine Impossible

As Hamza starts tellling his story, tears roll slowly down his cheeks.

Sitting on the back of a white pick-up truck with other Ghanaians, Hamza and his fellow countrymen are within eyesight of the rusted steel bollard fencing that demarcates the dividing line between San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Mexico.

On the other side of la linea, Hamza hopes to claim asylum in the United States.

It’s been a long, laborious journey to get this far. Hamza left Ghana for Brazil the day after his only daughter was born, which also happened to be Eid al-Fitr. That was May 2, 2022. It took Hamza another three, arduous months to make his way by foot, truck, train, and bus across the Amazon and then through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala to Mexico. Along the way, Hamza said he saw dead bodies hidden in the bush, witnessed multiple assaults, and suffered the pangs of frequent hunger without adequate access to halal food. He spent another one and a half months in Mexico, bouncing from shelter to shelter, struggling to maintain a halāl diet and keep to his daily cycle of prayers.

Then he heard about Albergue Assabil (“the Shelter of the Path”), a sanctuary in Tijuana for Muslim migrants run by the Latina Muslim Foundation (LMF) of San Diego, California.   

Sitting outside the shelter, tantalizingly close to his goal, he is filled with hope and fear, expectation and exhaustion. “Next week, insha’Allah, I will be in the U.S.,” he said.

Hamza is far from alone.

Described as a “waiting room” for “thousands of migrants who try to reach the border between Mexico and the US every month” and a principal landing point for deportees, Tijuana has taken center stage in the ever-unfolding drama of migrants’ journeys to the U.S.

Among them are Muslims like Hamza, from places like Chechnya and Afghanistan, Syria and Ghana. According to Eduardo Campos Lima, writing for Arab News, “thousands of people from Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa try to reach the US-Mexico border every month.” Although there are no firm statistics about these “Muslim migrant flows,” organizations in the region report that more-and-more are making their way north from Brazil to the U.S./Mexico border.

For Muslim migrants, the “normal” stresses of labor precarity, family separation and potential imprisonment, deportation, or death are compounded by additional complications. Arriving in Tijuana, Muslim migrants face added challenges of finding shelter where they can consume halāl food, access facilities for prayer, and procure information about asylum in a language they can easily comprehend. If they are able to cross over, a triple bind of Islamophobia, anti-migrant sentiment, and a host of American fears about crime, disease, and a loss of cultural privilege await.

To provide a humane, and helpful, place for Muslim migrants to land in Tijuana Sonia Tinoco García and LMF constructed a purpose-built Muslim shelter. Opening in the border city’s Zona Norte neighborhood in March 2022, the shelter features separate men’s and women’s facilities, a prayer and wudu area, halāl food, Quran classes, and legal services to assist migrants. In the first year of operation, they served over 1,000 asylum seekers, deportees, and others seeking shelter.