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Recently released from police custody by the ICE, migrants form a line to board a bus that will take them to a shelter on Christmas Day.
Monica Ortiz Uribe for NPR
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Monica Ortiz Uribe for NPR
Recently released from police custody by ICE, migrants alternate to board a bus that will take them to a shelter on Christmas Day.
Monica Ortiz Uribe for NPR
For the third day in a row, Immigration and Customs officials released hundreds of migrant asylum seekers in a park near a bus station in the downtown area. El Paso. Comparisons between Mary and Joseph wandering the roads of Bethlehem in search of shelter are inevitable for dozens of volunteers who intervened to help. Especially Christmas day.
"The sentence was trotting in my head last night:" There is no room at the hostel, we have to make it. "" Kathryn Schmidt, a social worker who co-founded the NPR, Borderland Rainbow Center , an LGBT community,
"I grew up Catholic … so it seemed to be obvious, there are people who are hungry, who have no place to stay. .. and it's Christmas, "added Schmidt.
Starting Sunday and until Christmas Eve, ICE dropped approximately 400 migrants near the Greyhound bus terminal, with no apparent plan for men, women and children.
Typically, ICE coordinates with local shelters when the agency's processing centers are overcrowded. But this time, ICE failed to contact them in advance and continued to bring in the mostly Central American immigrants to the public park, leaving them totally dependent on generous strangers who were massed to distribute food, water and blankets when the temperature drops in mid-life
But in the Christmas afternoon, after the release of 134 immigrants by federal agents, ICE had resumed communication now transporting the migrants to nearby shelters.
It is unclear why ICE stopped coordinating with shelter protection groups and immigrant rights advocates. The officials were unable to respond to NPR's requests for comment because the government had been closed.
An automatic email from the agency explained: "All ICE public affairs officers are absent during the closure of the government.We are unable to respond to media questions during this period, because we are forbidden by law to work. "
Dylan Corbett, who heads a local aid group called Hope Border Institute, told NPR that one of the authorities The person present at the scene said: "I have a heavy heart, I am a human being, but I am orders." "
Also Tuesday, a Guatemalan boy aged 8 years old became the second child of this month to die while he was in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection.
The boy whose name was not disclosed is dead.
Beto representative O 'Rourke (D-Texas) told CNN that ICE is expected to drop another 200 on Wednesday, bringing the total to four days over 800 days.
Liberated migrants must appear at a later date in an immigration court extremely late. In the meantime, some go to relatives elsewhere in the country.
Dawn Vigil, a teacher at the University of Texas at El Paso, who helped bring migrants back from shelters at the bus station, explained how it was to meet families face-to-face: "Heart wrenching and comforting at the same time".
"You see it well, social media, you can read about it … but actually being a witness is incredibly ful power," Vigil told NPR, adding, "That made me simply filled with love. "
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