A defunct nightclub in the south of the city now hosts the thousands of migrants who arrived in the two caravans from Central America.A collections of tents fills the courtyard inside El Barretal. Thousands of Central American migrants live on the pavement on the patio inside the unused nightclub in Tijuana, Mexico.

Two competing explanations exist for why over 2,000 migrants now live in a large, defunct nightclub in a poor southeastern corner of Tijuana, Mexico.

The first explanation is meteorological: When two large caravans of migrants from Central America first arrived into Tijuana last month, the Mexican government funneled them onto a large sports field on the northern side of the city. However, at the end of November, when rains came and flooded the field, the government closed the camp and moved migrants to "El Barretal," an abandoned nightclub in the southeast of the city.

But many of the migrants (and the international aid workers working at El Barretal), disagree with that version of events.