ACORN Mexico bridges the divide between immigrant ACORN members and their families back home. ACORN Mexico works in the areas: Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and Matamoros, which are located directly across the border from San Diego, Calif., El Paso and Harlingen, Texas, where members share similar concerns for safer streets, better schools and a reduction in industrial pollution.

ACORN Tijuana

Most of ACORN Tijuana's work is in districts heavily populated by "maquiladora" or factory workers. In those communities, companies are both landlords and bosses with a dangerous degree of control over workers' lives. Health care is not provided, although it is greatly needed, and wages range from $50 to $60 a week, poverty level in a city with the cost of living comparable to many cities in the United States.

In response to mistreatment at the hands of the maquiladora plants, Tijuana's ACORN members plan to launch an international economic campaign, targeting consumers who buy products from factories where workers are sexually harassed, unjustly fired or poisoned through water contamination and lack of ventilation.

El Paso and Ciudad Juarez

 
El Paso ACORN also launched a successful cross-border corporate-responsibility campaign aimed at cleaning up the toxic ASARCO smelting plant, which pollutes communities on both sides of the Rio Grande. ACORN is working to eliminate water and soil contamination in the binational region of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.