San Antonio has served as a refuge before
In 2005, when the Gulf Coast was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, San Antonio became a refuge for evacuees, as they came to be called.
They were much like refugees, emotionally and physically spent after suffering through one disaster and then a disastrous federal response.
San Antonio’s response was centered at the former Kelly AFB, then known as Kelly USA, where a massive effort created temporary shelters for thousands of people. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and dozens of agencies and charities responded.
Reporters interviewed evacuees, who were as shell-shocked as they were grateful, as they spent days resting, recovering, praying and making plans to rebuild or start over.
I hope they recall their time in San Antonio as humane and comforting despite the circumstances. I hope they saw a city that rose to the occasion and responded with humanitarianism.
Central American migrant youth coming our way soon deserve no less.
They’ll be headed to Joint Base San Antonio-lackland, where the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement will lead efforts to unite them with their families or sponsors.
Under the Homeland Security Act, HHS has adopted a child welfare-based model of care.
Someday these children, at least some of them future Americans, will tell stories to their grandchildren about how they were treated.
Like so many evacuees from Hurricane Katrina and Rita, migrant children left places where poverty exacerbates violence and political instability.
Despite the many risks, their parents sent them to us because they face far worse at home, where police and other authorities are as menacing as representatives of cartels and gangs.
As temporary a shelter at Lackland and the Freeman Coliseum will be, both will exceed the circumstances these asylum seekers have experienced and are far superior to those they’re leaving in crowded Border Patrol facilities ill-equipped to house them.
President Joe Biden’s transition team had asked the outgoing Trump administration to ready the number of licensed beds to shelter minors and spend available federal dollars.
But the requests were ignored, the president said Thursday at his first news conference, where he underscored his position that his administration will not turn away children or leave them in Mexico.
They suffered in Third World refugee camps along a First World border.
A pastor who runs a migrant shelter in Laredo this week said he listened to migrant minors who said they left Central America because of fear. They will need to prove “credible fear” to win asylum.
They’ll be temporarily housed at Lackland and the coliseum and then placed with family or sponsors while they go through the asylum process.
This comes after the Biden administration abolished Trump’s Remain in Mexico program, which kept asylum seekers at bay. He also halted a more inhumane Trump program that separated children from their parents without an efficient system to reunite all of them.
The children who’ll arrive in San Antonio were apprehended by border authorities or surrendered themselves and requested asylum. Some had telephone numbers on their clothing.
They left Central America after weather permitted, as others before them have done this time of year to avoid the deadly desert heat.
Their treks are seasonal and have come to be expected, at least by migration data experts who study such movements.
This time, however, their numbers were joined by migrants held back on the Mexican side of the border, preventing them from asylum case work, screenings and hearings.
The Biden administration had sought to avoid overcrowding at Border Patrol facilities by scaling up the number of licensed beds for migrant minors.
The president said his administration is building “capacity” that his predecessor should have maintained or strengthened.
In the coming days or weeks, Lackland will be the site of the administration’s short-term immigration work.
It’s humanitarian work that shows the Biden administration is headed in the right direction. But it will face well-deserved criticism for its lack of transparency.
So far, the White House has been unwilling to open shelters to the press and immigration advocates that want to inspect conditions.
The long-term work will be much harder. Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants, has been tapped to lead an effort to work with Central American leaders to keep more of their citizens at home.
What San Antonians can do to help is still unknown and may not be possible given federal rules. But knowing San Antonio’s great big heart, it will find a way. When San Antonio became home to thousands of Hurricane Katrina and Rita evacuees, a local nonprofit agency did express disagreement with the federal response, but it was mostly centered on providing more humanitarian support.
“People are so frustrated,” the nonprofit leader said. “They want to help and don’t know what to do.”