More and more border communities are sounding the alarm about the border crisis, as migrants are thrown onto their streets by the Border Patrol, which has maxed out its capacity to house recent arrivals.
Leaders in El Paso, Texas, are warning that they won’t be able to keep large groups of migrants from sleeping on the streets – what the city considers a worst-case scenario – much longer.
On Thursday alone, about 1,700 immigrants entered the US through El Paso in a 24-hour period.
In previous weeks, the city had seen fewer than 1,000 migrants a day.
“We will not have a street broadcast,” said city Mayor Oscar Leeser during a press conference Friday morning.
“Priority No. Our 1 is the safety of our communities and the safety of our asylum seekers. We don’t want them sleeping on the streets, but at some point, we will run out of capacity.”
Asylum seekers line up to surrender to Border Patrol agents outside El Paso, Texas.REUTERS
Until now, city governments have been able to delay so-called “street clearances,” when immigrants who have been screened and processed by the Border Patrol are released into the community when the agency runs out of space to hold them.
El Paso shelters that normally accommodate immigrants are at capacity, telling The Post in August that they are “busier than ever.”
Leeser said the city has 400 dedicated hotel rooms per night available to immigrants – paid for by federal tax dollars. Sometimes, the need is greater, as on Thursday night when migrants filled 700 hotel rooms.
El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said immigrants sleeping on the streets of West Texas would be the worst-case scenario. AFP via Getty Images
In those cases, they can avoid having migrants on the street by booking extra hotel space, but rooms are not always available.
“The number continues to grow,” Leeser explained. “This has been something that we find every day to prevent from happening.”
A west Texas mayor hopes to avoid the fate of other border cities like San Diego, where he said 1,100 immigrants were released into the community on Tuesday.
In southern California, street broadcasts continued Wednesday, when three busloads were released at a trolley station in Otay Mesa, local NBC station reported.
More than 1,000 immigrants were released into San Diego County Tuesday, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said.REUTERS
Migrants often have no money or little money to reach whatever city is their final destination.
“Is it OK if I go to Chicago, no arrests?” an unidentified immigrant asked a Border Patrol agent, according to Border Reports.
“You are free to go,” replied an agent.
That left migrants and local officials scrambling to pay for travel to their cities of choice, meanwhile, living on the streets.
For weeks, Arizona cities such as Nogales and Casa Grande have experienced street walkouts.
Arizona has become another major border flash point and immigration encounters in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector are the highest in the country.
Border sources there confirmed the state recorded 9,100 migrants found in a single day last week — close to the record 10,000 a day experienced across the border in May when Title 42 expired. More than 7,400 of those migrants had crossed illegally and then turned themselves in to the border patrol, overwhelming available resources.
Migrants have been released onto the streets in Nogales and Casa Grande, Border Patrol sources told The Post, sharing photos of migrants who have traveled to the US from around the world roaming public spaces.
Sources also say the massive influx of immigrants into Arizona is being orchestrated by cartels.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
