Mexican Border Mayor Claims Judge Won’t Let Him Work With Immigration Officials

The mayor of the Mexican border city of Tijuana claims that a federal judge ordered him to stop turning detained migrants over to immigration authorities. The judge also told him to stop speaking “freely” about the migrant caravan.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum become a key figure in the Migrant Caravan issue when thousands of Honduran nationals made their way to his city while on their way to California. Soon after their arrival, Gastelum made headlines for declaring a humanitarian crisis and speaking out about the federal government failing to provide adequate supplies. He said the lack of funding left his city to pick up the slack, Breitbart News reported at the time. The sudden arrival of the migrants also led to protests where residents unhappy with the migrants chanted for them to leave and at times clashed in the streets. The mayor was often critical of the trash and lack of proper sanitary conditions caused by having thousands of migrants housed in one place.

The mayor also spoke out about the criminal activity within some of the caravan members. He began cracking down on some of the migrants who his police officers arrested for various crimes and turned them over to Mexican federal authorities for deportation, Breitbart News reported.

Most recently, Gastelum took to social media to claim that an unnamed Mexican federal judge had ordered him to stop speaking “freely” about the caravan. A move that the mayor claimed was a “total censure” to his “freedom of expression” and a disservice to the people he represents.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.