Photograph by Meghan Dhaliwal

Image Title: Untitled, 2018

Dimensions: 16x20"

Medium: Digital Inkjet Print

Year Created: 2018

Image Description:

April 24, 2018 - A group of young Central Americans walk from one shelter to another after the first shelter ran out of room in Tijuana, Baja California Norte, Mexico. The group will join about twenty others in sleeping in church pews or on the floor of a shelter in Tijuana's center.

The group is part of the "migrant caravan," and are on day 31 of their journey to the US-Mexico border, where many plan to apply for asylum. Now that they are in Tijuana, the group will meet with lawyers this weekend and prepare to file their asylum claims. It is estimated that over one hundred people will be filing asylum claims from the group. The caravan has drawn international attention after US President Donald Trump's 2018 Easter-weekend tweetstorm about the arrival of the migrants on the border. In a statement today, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen threatened caravan members with prosecution if they "make a false immigration claim."

Photographer's Bio:

Meghan Dhaliwal (b. 1990) is a freelance photojournalist, editor, researcher, writer and multimedia producer based in Mexico City, MX. She speaks conversational Spanish. Her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Buzzfeed and more. She has also worked as a photographer with the non-profit Direct Relief International. She has a special interest in covering public health issues that arise as a consequence of conflict or natural disaster.

Prior to her freelance career, Meghan was the Multimedia Projects Coordinator at the Pulitzer Center in Washington, DC. During her 2.5 year run on staff, she designed e-books, curated exhibitions, spoke at schools and universities across the country, worked with youth programs, and worked as a grantee for two projects: one inHaitiand one inAfghanistan. She has also been a recipient of an International Reporting Project grant to report in Haiti and a International Center for Journalists fellowship to report in India. In July of 2017 she was part of the International Women's Media Foundation's hostile environment training and fellowship to report from Tijuana, Mexico.

meghandhaliwal.com