TIJUANA, Mexico — In the last phone conversation that Pethou Archange had with her younger brother, he told her that he had a surprise for her birthday.
The next day, Archange, 41, received a call that her brother had died in Tijuana, becoming the latest in the city's Haitian community to make headlines for a death that might have been prevented but for the overlapping effects of U.S. border policies and systemic racism in Mexico.
The nonprofit Haitian Bridge Alliance, with offices in San Diego and Tijuana, has helped cover the costs of 12 funerals for such deaths since December, according to Vivianne Petit-frère, a community liaison with the organization based south of the border who is herself a migrant trying to reach the United States.
