PROCESSING TENTS OPEN NEAR BORDER
Soft-sided facility can hold 500, meant for those in Border Patrol custody
San Diego Border Patrol agents now have a soft-sided facility to use for processing apprehended migrants — the first of its kind in California.
Though agents in Texas have used several such facilities in recent years, it is the first one to appear at the California
border. The series of tent structures near the Brown Field Airport and next to a Border Patrol station in Otay Mesa will hold about 500 people, according to Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency to the U.S. Border Patrol. CBP announced the opening of the facility on Tuesday.
“The facility’s primary purpose is to safely and expeditiously process individuals in U.S. Border Patrol custody,” the agency said in its press release about the facility. “CBP consistently evaluates operational requirements to determine if additional temporary facilities will be needed.”
The 130,786-square-foot facility is weatherproof and climate-controlled, according to CBP, and is supposed to have areas for eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene. Its design is similar to other recently constructed soft-sided facilities, CBP said.
The agency declined a request to see inside the facility.
According to CBP, construction began on the project on Dec. 16 and cost about $15.3 million.
It appears that the facility is already operational. On Tuesday, a contracted prison bus used by CBP to transport people in its custody was seen leaving the facility, as was an unmarked van with similar metal cages around the passenger area. Contracted security guards monitored a gate in one section of a newly erected privacy fence with barbed wire on top.
CBP said that it was installing the temporary facility to better utilize the area’s resources, both in terms of Border Patrol staff and easy access to transportation hubs.
“Temporary soft-sided facilities allow the Border Patrol to increase processing capacity and provide more appropriate facilities for mi
grants,” the agency told the Union-Tribune via email Wednesday. “San Diego is a large sector and has the available manpower to adequately staff a centralized processing center, which San Diego Sector did not have previously.”
In the first quarter of fiscal 2023, San Diego agents made about 8 percent of the total apprehensions along the southwest border, according to CBP data.
From October through December, San Diego Border Patrol made more than 53,500 apprehensions. Over 40 percent of those encountered were later expelled through a policy known as Title 42, which blocks asylum seekers and other migrants from crossing the border and instructs officials to send them back to Mexico or their home countries without the normally legally required screenings for protection needs.
It’s not clear how many of the recent apprehensions were repeat crossers. In December, Border Patrol reported nationally that 14 percent of its apprehensions were of people who had already been caught in the previous 12 months.
The number of apprehensions has trended gradually upward over the past year. Over the same quarter the year before, agents made more than 41,400 apprehensions.
The San Diego Sector also often processes migrants who crossed in other areas. Migrants are frequently bused or flown from other parts of the border, such as Yuma, that see more crossings.
However, preliminary reports from the federal government indicate that apprehensions borderwide have decreased significantly in January.
In December, the migrant shelters that typically receive those being released from Border Patrol custody filled to capacity because of flight cancellations and a slowdown in people leaving the shelters for their final destinations elsewhere in the country. Border Patrol responded by leaving asylum seekers, including families with young children, at bus stations. Some of the migrants didn’t have phones or money to make their way to their loved ones across the U.S.
Some wondered why Border Patrol didn’t set up some kind of facility at the time so that people wouldn’t be left on the street.
More recently, rumors have surfaced among advocacy groups that the Biden administration is planning to bring back a Trump-era policy in which Border Patrol agents rather than asylum officers conduct preliminary screenings on migrants to see whether they have cases that might merit protection.
Several advocates told the Union-Tribune that these interviews will likely be conducted in special spaces set aside in soft-sided facilities.
The facility could also be a step to prepare for the potential end of Title 42, which is currently caught up in a legal battle.
There are many asylum seekers waiting just south of the border for the policy to change so that they can request protection. That means that, at least initially, there are likely to be more requests than there is processing space — especially at local ports of entry. However, the press release from CBP indicates that the tents are meant for processing people in Border Patrol custody, which would not include those who come through the ports of entry.