“I came here after going to Tijuana’s General Hospital, they told me they would take care of me here, and they have” says Juan, a HIV patient who arrived at Las Memorias shelter with severe pneumonia and malnutrition.

“Here I eat right, I rest and take my medication on time, they help me get to the doctor; in the three months since I got here I have gotten very chubby” he laughs. Juan was born in Jalisco, Mexico and lived in California for the past 14 years, before being detained and deported after a raid at a vegetable packing plant where he worked.

Las Memorias (Memories) Shelter is a place that specializes in the care of HIV and Aids patients. It is currently housing 55 people, including a woman with a 4 month old boy who was born without the virus, thanks to prenatal medication and a c-section, and another pregnant woman whose delivery date is around Christmas.

The shelter, -the only one of its kind in the city- gives the patients a safe place to live and all the medical attention they need. It also supports them psychologically so they can get off of drug and alcohol addiction.

Those who come here find a great family, for many, the only family they have left, their families having rejected them either for their addiction or their HIV status.

“Many of the patients we house are drug and alcohol addicts, because addiction is distinctly linked to HIV prevalence, along with homelessness, which makes them vulnerable to tuberculosis infection and slowly debilitates them” the shelters director Antonio Granillo explains.

“I dare to claim one out of every three of our patients is an immigrant; many of them got HIV while living in the US or after being deported to Tijuana and using drugs” says Granillo.

Granillo is himself a recovering addict who was using drugs for 24 years before checking himself into a rehab center in Tijuana, Centro de Integración y Recuperación para Enfermos de Alcoholismo y Drogadicción (CIRAD). It was there where he developed his patient care skills.

According to the Immigrant Health Survey 2006-2007 by Doctors of the World, immigration is a great risk factor for HIV contraction, because drug use and risky sexual practices are more common in the immigrant population.

The survey states at least 1% of immigrants who participated in the survey done in Tijuana and Mexicali had HIV and it is not clear whether they got infected in the US or after their deportation to the border area. This number is alarming considering that HIV prevalence in US population is .6% and just .3% in Mexico.

Access to health has been the real challenge, especially for immigrant patients.

“Before the low income medical insurance Seguro Popular was in place we had a very hard time getting the medication on time” Gradillo tells, “for immigrants the challenge now is that in order to get into the program they have to show a birth certificate or federal credential that they don’t have, because they are deported and they lost everything in the process”.

With a stable home and out of the drugs and alcohol, Juan recovered and now works outside the shelter to help support it.

“This is a great brotherhood, where everyone helps each other out, and you help out in your own capacity; there are no luxuries, but it sure beats the alternative of being in the streets, consuming drugs alone.”