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EL PASO – Hundreds of asylum seekers spent part of Christmas Eve on a downtown car park here without knowing where they will end up.
Immigration and Customs Law enforcement officers began to file migrants late Sunday at a local bus station without warning local shelters that usually host large groups after requesting asylum and security. who were released by federal agents.
About 200 people arrived on Sunday and about 200 others arrived on Monday – the total number could exceed 800 by Wednesday, according to Beto representative O 'Rourke, D-El Paso.
Normally, ICE would alert the Annunciation House, a local shelter that has hosted tens of thousands of migrants and is located in several places in this border town. But that did not happen Sunday night, said O & # Rourke.
"Our challenge is that, until now, ICE has not been able to give us enough time to prepare these beds so that migrants are not sitting on the sidewalk, nor on parking or in a bus station. " or on a Sun Metro bus, "said O Rourke to reporters in the parking lot of a local park one block west of the bus station.
O. Rourke stated that when the shelters are full, a coordinated effort was put in place with the office City emergency management to set up temporary shelters and ICE generally give local responders 24 hours notice.
Shelters have reached their maximum capacity, but volunteers and workers can usually find temporary housing elsewhere if they are warned sufficiently in advance.
The fallout comes as the government is putting an end to a dispute in the US Congress on financing of the presidential border wall project Donald Trump ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday and it is unclear what role the stop has played in the situation.
The El Paso area of the US Border Patrol, the agency that greets migrants when they arrive in the United States between entry points, announced Friday that its Public information offices would not be available during the closure. In October, ICE released more than 200 asylum seekers on the streets of El Paso after stating that the agency could no longer hold them for more than a few days.
O & # 39; Rourke stated that he and his team were in contact with ICE and the Customs and Border Protection offices and were doing their utmost to ensure that the migrants were placed in shelters or hotels – at least temporarily – until they head to their final destinations.
"I know that the people who work with ICE, CBP and Annunciation House want to do what is right, and I hope that the conversations we have had and that we will have, we can do the right thing."
While she was huddling with her 2-year-old son Marcelo at the downtown firefighters memorial park, Mariel Mendez, 28, said she was not sure of his next move.
"We hope to be able to call our family in Tennessee," she said in Spanish. "But until now, we have not heard anything, they simply dropped us off". The two men traveled for a month by bus from Honduras before arriving in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before crossing the Rio Grande and surrendering.
. 19659002] On the Facebook page of the Annunciation House, officials said they had been able to house migrants arriving Sunday through its network of volunteer partners. He asked the public for cash donations, food and new clothes.
On Monday afternoon, it was clear that the call was being made because several El Pasoans were arriving near the bus station with food, water, clothes and soft toys for the children .
"We went to Sam's house earlier today to buy a whole range of food, but that was not enough," said El Pasoan Javier Grajeda. "So we had to go get some dollar burgers at McDonalds."
Grajeda, an oilfield engineer working in Midland, said he might be late for his Christmas Eve dinner, but he could not turn his back on his community. The cold weather – forecasts predict a minimum of 40s Monday night – is also a concern, he said.
"We brought some blankets but that's not enough," he said. "It's not fair that they do this in such a short time.There are volunteers, but they need enough time" to act.
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