West Texans helping to house migrants already at border

EL PASO, Texas — 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, the founder and executive director of Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that has cared for migrants for 40 years.

At the Paseo del Norte bridge connecting El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, hundreds of Central American parents and children camp out each night, waiting for the chance to apply for asylum at the port of entry. Hundreds more families cross between ports, requesting asylum after being apprehended by Border Patrol agents.

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.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement releases about 2,100 people per 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. Jose Oscar Martinez Cruz, 23, right, of El Salvador, holds his 9 month-old son, Carlos Samuel Martinez Alfaro, as Orlando Guifaro, 53, middle, of Honduras, reaches for his son, Justin Guifaro, 5, while staying with other Central American migrant families in an El Paso, Texas, motel.

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 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.