Texas groups scramble to help migrants on border
EL PASO — As attention focuses on a migrant caravan moving north through Mexico, communities in Texas along the border are scrambling to help hundreds of Central American families already arriving there each week.
“This is the third surge (of migrants) that we’ve seen over the past three years. Clearly it is the highest, the largest surge that we’ve seen,” said Ruben Garcia, founder and executive director of Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that has cared for migrants for 40 years.
At the Paso del Norte bridge connecting El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, hundreds of Central American parents and children camp out each night, waiting for the chance to apply for asylum.
The migrant families are initially detained in holding cells at the bridge or at Border Patrol stations. Built to house people for a few hours for processing, the holding cells have been used in recent weeks to house 20 or more people at a time for up to three days. Some families have reported being moved from one cell to another, sometimes spending a week or more in detention before being released.
In El Paso, Immigration and Customs Enforcement releases about 2,100 people a week to Annunciation House, which works with area churches to shelter and feed migrant families as they await transportation to join relatives elsewhere in the United States. That rate has tripled in the past month, leading Annunciation House to increase the number of churches it relies on to house migrant families.
Garcia said his aim is to create “equilibrium” by increasing Annunciation House’s capacity to match the number of migrant families being detained in holding cells. His agency currently rents two El Paso motels at a cost of $38,000 a week to help meet increased demand.
“Our goal is to build capacity to be able to end the practice of using these cells as temporary detention sites, where people are bunched up in ways that is very inappropriate and not healthy,” he said.
Garcia said more space should also cut the need for families to sleep on the Mexican side of the bridge as they wait to apply for asylum in the United States. Customs and Border Protection officers have been regularly denying entry to would-be asylum seekers since spring, claiming ports of entry lack the capacity to process more people. The increased numbers of people camping on the bridge, however, is something that has only just started over the past couple of weeks.
Roger Maier, a CBP spokesman in El Paso, said: “It is a priority of our agency to process and transfer all individuals in our custody to the appropriate longer-term detention agency as soon as possible.”
The cost of caring for the migrant families after their release is borne by churches and Annunciation House donors. The government contributes no money to the effort.
Hundreds of volunteers have flocked to the shelters over the past week, Garcia said.
“It is their commitment that I truly believe personifies, exemplifies what it really means to be a citizen of the United States,” he said.
CBP statistics show that apprehensions at the border are rising over 2017 levels, but still well below the numbers seen in the 1990s and 2000s. The number of families apprehended, however, is at record levels, with 16,658 members of “family units” taken into custody in September at the southwest border.
Officials said 2,676 of those apprehensions came in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, said her shelter at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen is now taking in 500 migrant family members a day following their release by immigration officials, up from about 150 a day in late summer.