Border disaster
Aid orgs & guards facing an overload not seen since '19
With thousands of Latin American migrants continuing to make their way across the border, aid groups and authorities are worried that numbers will swell to crisis levels not seen since 2019, when more than 800,000 people were apprehended by Border Patrol agents.
Already the crisis is so bad, the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday ordered FEMA to help care for the growing influx of migrant children.
The agency will help with the sheltering and transporting of kids over the next 90 days, officials said.
“We believe the numbers will certainly increase to 2019 levels,” said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in the Texas border city of McAllen.
The organization runs a respite center where newly arrived migrants can get a meal, clean clothes and arrange travel to other parts of the US where they have family. Pimentel told The Post her organization is processing more than 500 people a day.
At the height of the border crisis in 2019, the nonprofit was helping more than 1,000 migrants a day.
“There are efforts on the part of the administration to fix root causes because most people want to stay in their own countries,” she said. “But until we fix that, people will just keep coming.”
The migrants now crossing the border are coming in family groups with kids under 6, which allows them to seek asylum in the US, Pimentel said, adding that many are escaping gang violence and devastation from hurricanes in Central America.
Pimentel’s group has also helped thousands of migrants who have been waiting for nearly two years in makeshift camps on the Mexican side of the border. They are finally being allowed into the US by the Biden administration, she said.
The recent surge is forcing government agencies such as US Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to seek reinforcements. Michael Meade, the acting assistant director of ICE, called for the “immediate” deployment of volunteers in a memo to staff on Thursday, according to e-mails obtained by The Washington Post.
In Texas, US officials are processing hundreds of migrants daily.
“US Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley are commonly encountering families and unaccompanied alien children being smuggled into the country in groups of more than 100,” according to a US Customs and Border Protection statement issued Friday.
On Tuesday, Border Patrol apprehended 100 undocumented migrants in La Grulla, Texas, that included nine travelers from Romania and two Cubans. Wednesday, agents apprehended 102 near La Joya, Texas. There are more than 3,500 kids stranded in detention centers near the Mexican border, and hundreds more on the Mexican side.
“Even with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, human smugglers continue to try these brazen attempts with zero regard for the lives they endanger,” the statement said.
The Biden administration said Friday the facilities do not have the capacity to increase the number of beds, as more than 3,500 unaccompanied children and teens crossed the southern border last week, according to statistics from the Department of Homeland Security.