SLRC braces for migrants’ arrival
Several thousand in caravan could end up in city
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — City officials and civil groups are bracing for what they say could be the arrival of up to 3,000 Central American migrants from among the caravan that previously crossed into Mexico en route to the U.S. border.
That number would represent the largest single gathering of immigrants ever in San Luis Rio Colorado applying for political asylum in the United States, and their arrival would pose a strain on shelters and public assistance, city officials said. The caravan — according to differing estimates, ranging between 4,000 and nearly 7,000 people — left Saturday from Mexico City on its way north, eventually planning to divide up into smaller groups that would travel on to various ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border.
San Luis Rio Colorado officials say they expect many of the migrants to enter on the western end of the nearly 2,000-milelong boundary between the countries.
“It’s still an unknown where exactly they are going to be headed or the time it will take them to arrive, but we are estimating that between 2,500 and 3,000 migrants could arrive in San Luis, because we are near California, and that is a friendly state for the migrants,” said Ricardo Trigo, who heads the city’s civil protection agency
They would not be the first group of immigrants to have come to San Luis
Rio Colorado in the course of seeking asylum in the states.
Most recently, immigrants from southern Mexico have camped out along the pedestrian walkway leading to the U.S. Port of Entry at San Luis, Ariz. A year ago, a small migrant caravan passed through Sonora and on to San Luis Rio Colorado, with most continuing on to Tijuana and Mexicali. And in 2016, groups of Haitian immigrants arrived in San Luis Rio Colorado and in nearby border cities in Baja California.
While the destination of the latest caravan remains in doubt, the municipal government in San Luis Rio Colorado has designated five shelters in city buildings where up to 300 people could be accommodated temporarily. In addition to that, another 500 beds are available in existing shelters.
Other locations around the city can be converted to serve as temporary shelter sites, Trigo said, although the city would need funding from the state or federal government for tents, blankets, food and water for the migrants.
The Don Chon Migrant Shelter, located just a couple of blocks from the border, has housed and fed 1,400 immigrants over the past month. But Ascension Serna, who founded the shelter three years ago, says the arrival of a large group from Central America would strain its resources beyond capacity.
“If they come here, I believe there could be up to 3,500. We have to be prepared. Nobody is going to stop this exodus.”
In recent weeks, he said, most of the shelter’s occupants have been individual Central Americans, who left ahead of the main caravan that crossed over into Mexico in October. But some, he said, are from southern Mexican states like Oaxaca and Michoacan who are seeking jobs or trying to escape drug cartel-related violence.
“These people are not criminals; they are fleeing crime and poverty. They want a better future for their children,” Serna said. “I think that rather than being a threat, they would help the economy of the United States with their work and their taxes.”
Receiving an influx of thousands of migrants would be a major challenge for a city used to seeing the arrival of only a fraction of that number, he said.
“We are going to require help from the state (of Sonora), just as we have received it for this shelter, and from the federal government. We have the capacity to accommodate 200 people, and we would have room to put of tents, but we don’t have them, and we need that assistance,” Serna said.
Serna said Brawley Foursquare Church routinely provides assistance to the shelter, and that the Walmart store in San Luis, Ariz., recently gave it bottled water for migrants.
“We have received a lot of help from the other side of the border,” he said, “but we are going to need more if the caravan arrives in the numbers that are thought to be coming.”
Trigo said that in times of extreme heat and cold, the city opens a shelter that typically houses 15 and 20 people who are indigent or homeless. And in the wake of the Easter earthquake in 2010 that damaged homes in the area, the city opened a shelter that temporarily accommodated dozens of people. But none of those events, he said, would compare with the potential impact of a caravan, were it to arrive in San Luis Rio Colorado.
“The caravan is moving very slowly,” he said. “There’s not a specific day or date it could arrive, but we have to be prepared. We already notified the state civil protection that we need tents, sleeping mats and bottled water. I don’t know if there will resources available from the state itself, because it look like the governor has asked for resources from the federal government.”