As the Trump administration deploys Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents nationwide, students across the country are organizing for the wellbeing of our immigrant communities. At UC San Diego, the Tijuana Youth Migrant Mentor Network takes direct action and mutual aid straight to the border.
Every Saturday, UCSD student volunteers with TYMMN travel to the Casa YMCA de Menores Migrantes, a shelter for unaccompanied and deported migrant children in Tijuana, Mexico. Called field mentors, these students spend time with the children staying there, doing fun activities like coloring and making slime, as well as teaching them practical skills such as gardening, cooking, and writing and speaking in English and Spanish.
UCSD alumni Mekayla Nariño and Aylin Paez founded TYMMN in September 2023 in collaboration with UCSD’s Center on Global Justice, a research center on poverty and global development.
From its founding, the group’s main focus has been on providing mentorship to vulnerable youth in Tijuana, using the pillars of antisavior allyship, empathy, and cross-cultural communication. The club’s core phrase is, “They don’t need us, but we need them.”
This mission is especially personal for third-year Norma Blanco Osorio, TYMMN program coordinator and an immigrant from Tijuana.
“In my childhood, I lived in Tijuana,” Osorio said. “It’s a very migrant city. A lot of communities from different countries come and go. … So, I grew up watching a lot of these communities, and just the news, and their social problems, economic problems, political problems. As a child, I feel like it’s really impactful when you see those situations, those experiences, and I always told myself that if I found a way to help, I was going to help.”
Like Osorio, many TYMMN members come from migrant or first-generation backgrounds. For fourth-year Danitza Arzate Rodriguez — a TYMMN co-community engagement officer and campus liaison — her upbringing in an immigrant family in the U.S. made her passionate about migrant advocacy.
Rodriguez believes that TYMMN’s work gives the children a sense of security despite the turbulence in their lives.
“[TYMMN reaffirms] the fact that there is a network of people, whether it’s on this side of the border or the other, that care about their development and their safety … because most of the times, they’re separated from their family,” Rodriguez said.
Osorio highlighted the joy in the organization’s weekly visits amid the horrors these children face everyday.
“We get to laugh, we get to know each other, they ask really random questions, so those little parts make my day better, and we try to make … theirs also better,” Osorio said.
In the midst of growing antimigrant attitudes and federal actions, TYMMN members are unwavering in their belief that their organization is more important now than ever, for both them and the children they work with.
“We know that even though it’s a little bit hard to mentor, or just to say things in a certain way, we know that we are not stopping with our mission,” Osorio said. “It’s not a time to be quiet but to be together and show unity as a whole, as a community, and just help.”
