The New York Times
Frozen immigration system begins to thaw and border towns prepare for flooding
EAGLE PASS, Texas – Immigration agents are releasing so many migrants in small towns along the Texas border today that Laura Ramos, owner of a store near the international bridge on Eagle Pass, said she was concerned about the safety of her business and of your children . “It is horrible and very dangerous,” she said. But Tohui Valero, who sells sunglasses and perfumes in a store about a block away, said he was not concerned about the dozens of new migrants who arrive every day. They are harmless, he said, and in any case, there is a substantial presence of new law enforcement officers in the city. “There are so many police and border patrolmen here, it is very safe,” he said. Subscribe to the New York Times newsletter The Morning While the Biden government melts an immigration system that had been largely frozen last year, cities along the 1,954-kilometer border are preparing for what federal officials warn will be a sharp increase in the release of migrants in their communities in the coming weeks. This is already happening in some places, leading some mayors and other local officials to appeal for federal aid. Aid workers operating shelters to help migrants along the way say they are feeling pressure on medical resources and their own facilities, although they dismiss fears that newcomers are a threat. Most, they say, are eager to meet with their families in other parts of the country and do not want to get in trouble that will delay them. Eagle Pass, a city of 29,000, sees up to 100 migrants arriving every day, mostly from Haiti, Cuba and Ecuador. In Yuma, a city of 96,000 in southwest Arizona, Mayor Douglas Nicholls said border officials have released more than 1,300 migrants in his city since mid-February. In Del Rio, Texas, a city of 36,000 people about 145 miles west of San Antonio, more than 1,300 migrants have arrived so far in March, down from less than 500 in February. Earlier this week, eight immigrants who were in the country illegally were killed outside Del Rio after being involved in a high-speed chase with the authorities, and the truck they were traveling in ran into another vehicle. “I have just four police officers working for a county of 3,200 square miles and 110 miles of border,” said Val Verde County sheriff Joe Frank Martinez, whose department patrols the border lands around Del Rio. “It’s just unsustainable. ” US Customs and Border Protection officials have been informing elected officials and nonprofit leaders across much of the border that the agency is preparing for even greater releases of migrants, basing assessments on the capacity of shelters in larger cities and in rules that require the agency to release migrants close to where they are arrested and prosecuted. The warnings led many to fear a repeat of the mass releases that affected border communities in 2019. The Trump administration largely ended the processing of new asylum applications across the border during the pandemic last year, and authorities in cities along the border fear that the latest plan to get the system up and running again will present burdens they are not ready to take on. “I would call it a crisis with an exclamation point,” said Don McLaughlin Jr., the mayor of Uvalde, a city of 16,000 people about 60 miles northeast of Eagle Pass. “We change administrations, we change policies and it is as if the floodgates open”. McLaughlin said that about 100 to 200 migrants are released by the Border Patrol every day in Del Rio, about an hour’s drive from Uvalde. In his city, McLaughlin said, he has noticed an increase in what he believes are migrants who have entered the country illegally and are traveling while avoiding Border Patrol checkpoints. Still, the mayor said that Uvalde saw only one migrant freed in the city by the Border Patrol – a man who was dropped off at a local convenience store during the snowstorm that hit Texas last month. “They let a guy hang out at the local Stripes,” he said, referring to the retail chain. The man was temporarily housed in a shelter that had been opened to local residents in the civic center during the storm. “We bought him a bus ticket,” said the mayor. “He wanted to go to Houston.” Federal officials said they are doing their best to deal with the growing number of migrants on the border and are working to expand the space available in federal shelters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency this week provided $ 110 million in funds to local non-profit organizations and government organizations that helped care for migrants released on the border. “The situation on the southwestern border is difficult,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement this week. “We are working 24 hours a day to manage it and will continue to do so.” The total number of migrants released is still relatively small, but groups of volunteers across the border are gearing up for a bigger influx after Mayorkas warned that the government expects the largest number of migrants’ apprehensions in 20 years. Most single adults and families are being quickly expelled under an emergency health order invoked by the Trump administration as protection against the coronavirus. Migrants’ families, Mayorkas said, are being allowed to enter the United States when Mexico is unable to shelter them in their shelters – a situation that has been responsible for most releases in border cities in recent weeks. The numbers could rise dramatically when, as expected, the Biden government eased pandemic-related border restrictions and many more migrants were able to file for asylum applications. Texas Governor Greg Abbott raised the alarm this week about the Biden government’s separate decision to admit thousands of children and adolescents who arrived at the border without a parent or guardian, warning that children could spread the coronavirus. “The Biden government is not fully prepared for the number of children crossing this border,” he said, adding: “How long will these children be here? Which countries are they from and to which COVID variants were they exposed? Are they being tested for COVID and, if so, how is management dealing with those who are positive? ”Local authorities and federal contractors say infection rates for migrants are lower than for Texas as a whole. Children are not being released to border cities, but the large number is overwhelming the federal government’s facilities that were created to house them. More than 9,500 children and teenagers were in shelters administered by the federal government this week, according to Biden government officials. More than 4,500 young migrants were still held in detention facilities at the border and have not yet been transferred to shelters, including more than 3,200 who have been held longer than the maximum 72 hours allowed by federal law. Children and adolescents spend an average of 129 hours in border detention centers, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. Most adults who are being released into border communities have come to court to review their requests to stay in the country. All are screened for infection and most stay in cities where they are released for just a few hours or an day or two. But the numbers are already challenging. A center run by the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition in Del Rio registered some 1,325 migrants so far in March, more than three times the number in February, said Tiffany Burrow, its director of operations. About 70% of them are Haitians, she said, with many others coming from Africa, “from Ghana to Angola plus Congo”. On Eagle Pass, a center run by Mission: Border Hope, a nonprofit organization, was helping about a dozen people this week, mostly families from Ecuador and Cuba. Yaritza Cruz Gamboa, 32, a Cuban woman who is eight months pregnant, said she was arrested three weeks ago with her brother and 15 other Cubans. She said her brother was fined $ 5,000 and sent to a detention center with other single men while she was released. Gamboa, who had plans to go to Houston, said he did not know what to do now with his brother still in detention. “I can’t travel to Houston alone,” she said. “I’m pregnant. I don’t know anyone.” The release of migrants is spurring debates in cities along the border. Erika Garcia, 28, who lives on Eagle Pass and helps her father run car workshops on both sides of the border, said that some of his neighbors who opposed him were being hypocritical, especially those with family ties in Mexico. “Our people came here before these policies; they crossed illegally,” said Garcia. “I don’t see why these migrants cannot enter. Eagle Pass “They are racist. They are racist with each other and racist with immigrants.” In McAllen, Texas, which has been a major center of migration to the United States, Border Patrol agents have lessened the impact of newly arrived migrants by releases with local authorities and non-profit groups. The numbers have been increasing in recent days. Mayor Jim Darling said migrant families were being taken away by the Border Patrol to Laredo, Texas, or on planes to El Paso, so that the local immigrant service system in McAllen is not overloaded. The daily numbers in McAllen have recently been much lower than in 2019, when local authorities sometimes dealt with more than 1,200 migrants released each day. “It could be a crisis on the river, and I know it is for the poor Border Patrol people, and it is a crisis in Washington because they cannot resolve it, but we are dealing with it in McAllen,” said Darling. “I don’t want to criticize the Border Patrol. They are doing what they can. “Elsewhere on the border, Nicholls, the mayor of Yuma, said he was encouraged two weeks ago after he contacted the White House about incoming immigrants and set up a meeting within 24 hours -” in fact, an answer very fast, “he said. He is pleading with federal authorities to reconsider the abandonment of migrants in places that are already scarce. “It doesn’t make sense if you drop into small border communities that don’t have the infrastructure, the nonprofit organizations, to properly address the humanitarian issues in their own communities,” said Nicholls. “This is a national issue that needs to be addressed with a national solution.” At the shelter in Del Rio, Burrow said that most migrants now left by the Border Patrol had money to transport relatives who were already in the United States; many take buses to San Antonio or Houston before heading to other locations. But she fears that this is just the beginning. For now, volunteers from the shelter in Del Rio can give each family a backpack with toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, towels and a comb. “We don’t have enough resources for the numbers we anticipate,” she said. “The numbers are designed to double, triple, quadruple.” This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company