Ariz. town’s woe of epic proportions
Officials in an Arizona border town say they get a weekly flood of migrants totaling 6% of their population — and the dire scenario has driven the area to the brink of collapse.
The town of Yuma has fewer than 100,000 residents, yet it sees 6,000 migrants crossing the border with Mexico every week, for a total of more than a half-million people in recent years, exasperated Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines told Fox News.
“The average for Yuma on a weekly basis is 6,000 people coming across. Of those 6,000, we have 1,000 to 2,000 ‘gotaways’ — people we have not been able to catch,” Lines said.
The Arizona community has been an immigration flashpoint for years, but the burden on the area often gets overlooked, with it ranking third in migrant apprehensions — behind the Texas cities of El Paso and Del Rio.
“There’s a couple of big waves coming,” Yuma resident and farmer Hank Auza explained. “Yuma can’t support that. It will overwhelm the system here.”
Nonprofits, churches and the medical system are already struggling, officials and residents say.
“Let’s talk about the financial impact and the strain that it’s placed on our hospital,” Lines, the county supervisor, told Fox. “So far, Yuma Medical Center has had more than $22 million in unreimbursed expenses specifically for people who are illegally crossing our border.
“I have received calls from people saying, ‘I had to take my wife to San Diego, I had to take my wife to Phoenix to deliver a baby because there were no more beds at this hospital.’ ”
Migrant traffic is also threatening one of the city’s main sources of income: agriculture.
“Our fields are monitored and audited and tested for different pathogens,” farmer Alex Muller said. “You can’t have people walking through the field.”
Border Patrol statistics show about 5 million migrants have entered the US through the southern border since President Biden took office. In December, 251,000 were stopped at the boundary — an alltime monthly high.
Of that total, an estimated 1.2 million migrants were able to illegally escape into the country during Biden’s term, federal sources told Fox News on Sunday.
During his last visit to the Grand Canyon State, Biden did not visit the border because, he said, he had “more important things going on.”