MEXICO CITY, July 24 (Reuters) - Mexico will create new spaces to welcome migrants in the north of the country, in an attempt to relieve the tensionsovercrowded hostels where thousands of people have waited for months for a response to their asylum requests in the United States as part of an agreement between both countries.
The two new shelters, which will be run by the federal government, will be installed in the border cities of Tijuana, in the state of Baja California, and Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua, with initial capacity for 4,000 people each.
Both cities are the largest recipients of migrants from the programMigrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
"We are in the cleaning stage, if it were required in less than a week we could get it up and running," said Alejandro Ruiz, representative of the federal government in Baja California, about the shelter in Tijuana, a city that has received more than 6,649 migrants since end of January.
From January 29 - when the MPP program started - until July 11, Mexico has received almost 20,000 foreign asylum seekers from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Ruiz clarified that the shelter in Tijuana will accept any migrant, not just asylum seekers in the United States.
Pressured by President Donald Trump's threats to impose tariffs on Mexican exports if the country did not help control irregular migration, the Latin American nation agreed to increase its border security with more troops and expand the MPP.
For his part, the cabinet coordinator in Chihuahua, Mario Dena, said that in two weeks the shelter would be ready in an old factory in Ciudad Juárez.
In a first stage, he added, it will have the capacity to house 3,000 people.
"There is great progress (...) some remodeling had to be done. We hope it will be (to house) more than 5,000 (migrants)," Dena explained.
Human rights organizations, including the United Nations, have denounced "unworthy" treatment and lack of basic services for migrants arriving in the country and for those returned as part of the MPP program.
On Tuesday, the National Migration Institute (INM) said it ordered the "comprehensive" remodeling of its main immigration stations. The INM has 66 properties to house foreigners throughout the country.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City, additional reporting by José Luis González in Ciudad Juarez. Editing by Javier Leira)
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