San Diego has released 13,000 migrants onto its streets over the past month as it continues to be overwhelmed by border crossings.
As thousands of people continue to be admitted to the US every day under current immigration policy, cities and towns across the southwest are under enormous pressure and officials don’t know how to cope.
San Diego authorities are receiving about 500 people a day and continue to squeeze as many families with children into the limited shelter space available, but others are sent to temporary transit centers to get out of the city.
“A lot of people don’t know where they are — that this is San Diego, this [the] San Diego County, the closest airport is San Diego and how to get to their final destination,” Paulina Reyes-Perrariz, managing attorney for the Immigrant Advocate Legal Center’s cross-border initiatives, told the Associated Press.
“That’s what we’re trying to support.”
Immigrants who cross into the US and present their hands to border patrol officers are held in custody for several days while their paperwork is checked, their identities and fingerprints are recorded and they are assessed to see if they have a claim to stay in the US.
A volunteer at a San Diego transit station tries to communicate with newly arrived immigrants using a translation app. California’s second-largest city has no shelters and is now sending thousands to makeshift stations.AP
After that they are either denied entry and deported, or — as in the case of more than two million people since Joe Biden became president — given papers and released to the US.
This presents a logistical nightmare for places like San Diego in California or El Paso and Brownsville in Texas as they have to deal with thousands of new arrivals a week, most of whom have little money to get them to their final destination in the US, where -wherever.
Previous reports show 95% of newly arrived migrants move from their point of arrival in the US with the main destination cities being New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami and Chicago.
Newly arrived immigrants from the US border charge phones and stock up on supplies at a temporary transit station in a San Diego parking lot. The city is running out of shelters and releasing migrants to temporary stations like this one. AP Migration figures from January to June show the top destinations across the country.
Last week, after a San Diego community center reported it could no longer handle the load, the border patrol sent shipments to “transit centers,” including parking lots where charities and volunteers are trying to provide instructions and shuttle buses to transport people to San Diego. Diego Airport or other transit hub.
Many immigrants have family, friends or networks from their hometowns already in the US that help them financially to get to their destination. There is also help from religious charities and other services, which often operate buses or pay for plane tickets.
“It’s a short time to intervene before they can stay in touch with their loved ones,” said Kate Clark, senior director of migrant services for Jewish Family Services of San Diego.
But confusion abounds among immigrants – an Eritrean immigrant arriving in San Diego asked one of the volunteers, “Is California far from here?”
City leaders in Chicago and New York have complained to President Biden and urged him to do something about the large influx of immigrants into their cities.
New York is seeing up to 600 people arrive a day, although it says it has no more capacity in the 200 shelters it has opened since the crisis hit.
Migrants from the US border await processing. Over the past month, about 13,000 immigrants arriving in San Diego have been sent to temporary transit stations because the city no longer has shelter space to accommodate them. ALLISON DINNER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Migrants in San Diego study a map of the US at a temporary transit station. The city has no shelters and asylum seekers are sent to sites like this, with officials hoping they get on a bus or plane to get out of the city. AP
About 3,700 migrants flooded the city in the week ending October 1, officials said – adding to the more than 118,400 asylum seekers who have arrived since spring 2022.
Chicago currently has more than 14,000 immigrants in its care and is forced to staff airports and police stations to keep up with the influx. However, it now faces the problem of where to put those people once the city’s sub-zero winter temperatures hit.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
