Luis Gutierrez

Agape Migrant Shelter

Carlos Romero is a 14-year-old teenager from Guerrero, a southern Mexican state. He migrated with his mother and little brother to Tijuana due to drug cartel violence in his home village. Kids like him are potential hitmen for the cartels; cartels either convince them to join voluntarily or against their will by threatening them and their families.

“We fled out of Guerrero in September because cartels wanted to recruit me for killing. I refused right away and then I started to get really disturbing threat messages to my phone,” Carlos said.

This was the last straw for his mother, who after that made up her mind to go north and seek a better future for her and her two sons. They made it to Tijuana in December and found a place in the Agape Migrant Shelter.

Once in the shelter, Carlos had too much spare time, which was stressing him out because of his constant thoughts about why this had happened to him and his family.

Carlos was featured in a Feb. 3 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune by Yolanda Morales. The irony of the Morales story was that Carlos, having helped others with the app, could not cross with his family.

Yolanda Morales

“In the beginning, I couldn't find my way to help in the shelter, I spent a month doing nothing because I needed to distract myself and think about something else but the threats, and suddenly I started helping with the registration of new migrants for the shelter.” He explained. “After doing so, I began feeling way better”.

Carlos lost track of how many people he assisted to get their asylum applications through the CBPOne App which turned out in January to be the only way to apply for that status, but Pastor Albert, who's in charge of the Agape shelter, said it might be around 150 and 200 people he has helped.

The main characteristics of those Carlos focused his aid on, were elderly or disabled migrants who have limited access to smartphones or limited skills for using them

The CBPOne Kid, as he was nicknamed by the community, found his way to be useful within the shelter and managed to keep a positive attitude despite waiting for his family's asylum application to be responded to.

Four months passed before Carlos and his family got to continue their asylum process within the U.S. On March 16 they crossed the border through El Chaparral Port of Entry to head to Texas where they have relatives living.

Before leaving Carlos spent time training other migrants to keep on what he started. Carlos said that they have now a Facebook group where they will coordinate themselves because he's not quitting helping others. Carlos' plans are to finish school to get to university and become a pilot.