On the border in El Paso, the migrant caravans arrive so regularly there's a housing
On the border in El Paso, the migrant caravans arrive so regularly there's a housing crunch
By MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE
OCT 24, 2018 | 1:30 PM
| EL PASO
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Jose Oscar Martinez Cruz, right, of El Salvador, holds his 9-month-old son Carlos, as Orlando Guifaro (in red hat) of Honduras reaches for his son Justin, 5, at an El Paso motel housing Central American families. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
While President Trump railed against a migrant caravan wending its way north through Mexico this week, hundreds of Central American immigrant families had already arrived at the border and been released into the U.S. by authorities.
The influx, unrelated to the caravan, has crowded immigration holding areas and detention centers across the southwest. Border Patrol has released so many families, advocacy groups in Arizona and Texas have had to house them in churches and motels.
In El Paso, the nonprofit Annunciation House shelter expected to take in 1,200 migrants this week and another 1,500 next week.
“We’re in effect receiving a caravan a month,” said Ruben Garcia, the shelter’s director, after serving pizza to immigrant families staying in 70 hotel rooms his group rented this week at a nightly cost of $3,500.
As he spoke, a Border Patrol agent called and asked Garcia whether he could shelter another 80 immigrants on Thursday. Garcia agreed — he had just heard from a church willing to take in up to 90 people, the latest of 16 religious groups in El Paso and nearby Las Cruces, N.M., to volunteer. He appealed to another church late Tuesday to help. His group runs on volunteers and donations.
“As the flow increases, I could say to Border Patrol I can’t accept any more. But I won’t, because I know what those holding cells are like. I want to expand our capacity,” Garcia said late Tuesday as he waited for two Border Patrol buses to arrive with the 80 migrants.
Border Patrol caught a record 16,658 immigrant family members crossing the border illegally in September, a White House spokesman said in briefings this week. More than 161,000 immigrant family members were caught or turned themselves in during the fiscal year that ended last month, 42% more than in any previous year, the spokesman said.
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Top: Central American migrants listen to an orientation speech after arriving at an El Paso motel where they will be housed and fed for a couple of days before going to be with family members. Left: Keys for the motel rooms where migrant families are staying. Right: Victor Joel Fuentes Godinez of Honduras, right, and Emerson Ubaldo Esrobedo Sylvester of Guatemala look at their phones at an El Paso motel. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Total annual apprehensions this year — family members, single adults, unaccompanied minors — were still below figures from 2014, the last major surge in families and unaccompanied children on the border, and far below numbers from past decades. Still, federal immigration detention facilities are now 98% full, forcing officials to release immigrants more rapidly and in larger groups, with the burden of sheltering them falling on immigrant advocates.
Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona was called on to shelter 250 immigrants last week, using motel rooms for overflow; 350 the week before in Tucson and another 250 in Yuma. When Greyhound bus service east slowed due to Hurricane Michael earlier this month, they chartered a bus with donations.
“It’s difficult to maintain this level of intensity,” said Teresa Cavendish, the nonprofit’s director of operations, who said they were warned to expect another 80 immigrants Wednesday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who dropped immigrants off at the motel where the group rented rooms, visited the nonprofit’s leaders Wednesday and warned that the first wave of the migrant caravan of 7,000 traveling northward could reach the border next week. Shelters are already full, and volunteers are exhausted, Cavendish said.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5bd0b01c/t...tures-011/2000Carmelina Sales Sanchez of Guatemala brushes her daughter Elsa Elizabeth's hair in their room. Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times“Folks from ICE are doing their best in terms of estimating the number of people they will be able to accommodate in their facilities,” said Marguerite “Peg” Harmon, CEO of the Catholic relief group. “They don’t know either how many people they will get on a given day.”
At the two El Paso motels, which Garcia asked not be identified for safety reasons, volunteers greeted arriving immigrant families with a brief orientation, then steered them toward showers and meals in a food tent set up in the parking lot. Afterward, working out of several rooms converted into makeshift offices, volunteers distributed room keys and helped families contact relatives to stay with as their immigration court cases proceed. Relatives usually pay bus fare so the new arrivals can join them.
Volunteers recorded the immigrants’ information on cards tacked to bulletin boards, including their departure times and destinations, which ranged from Charleston and New Orleans to Pittsburgh, Iowa City and Los Angeles.
The motel crowd included more fathers than mothers. They came for a mix of reasons. Some said they fled violence, others economic downturns, like the coffee rust fungus that has devastated crops in Guatemala.
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Clockwise from top left: Annunciation House volunteer Rachel Soltis gets in touch with Lesly Angelia's family in Los Angeles to arrange a bus ticket for her and her daughter, Argelee Yulieth, 3, a day after the pair were released from detention; Catarina Juan Francisco and her son, Byron Juan Francisco, of Guatemala, rest in the hallway of an El Paso motel; Annunciation House founder Ruben Garcia fields a phone call at a motel in El Paso; Victor Joel Fuentes Godinez of Honduras prays before lunch in a makeshift tent in the parking lot of an El Paso motel. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Jonathan Castellano fled Honduras with his 3-year-old daughter, Abigail, after his family was targeted by the criminal gang MS-13.
“They killed my mother, my father, my brother,” said Castellano, 21, pointing to the names of the dead tattooed on his right calf. He said his family was targeted because of a dispute the gang had with his late brother. Volunteers helped Castellano’s aunt get him a bus ticket to join her Wednesday in Houston.
“To save our lives, I had to go,” he said as his daughter played with rocks in the motel parking lot.
Orlando Guifaro also fled Honduras with his 5-year-old son, Justin, after he was extorted and received death threats from gangs. He left his wife and 3-year-old son, Hansel, behind because the trip north cost too much: $5,000 per person.
“I plan to send for them,” said Guifaro, 53, who was bound for Jacksonville, Fla.
Lesly Angelia Cac Pop came from Guatemala with her 3-year-old daughter, hoping to join relatives in Los Angeles.
Cac Pop, 22, said she fled after being forced to pay half her $260 monthly salary from a hardware store to extortionists. Police, she said, failed to help. She and her daughter left Oct. 6 with her husband, his sister, his sister’s husband and their baby girl.
They took buses into Mexico, thinking they would have a better chance of staying legally in the U.S. as families.
“If you don’t come with family, they deport you,” she said.
About 10 days ago, one of their buses was stopped in Oaxaca, Mexico, by police, who asked for the men’s identification, then detained them. Cac Pop said she hasn’t heard from them since.
She, her sister-in-law Lilivet “Lili” Rivas and their children continued north to Juarez — across the border from El Paso — where a taxi driver stole their suitcase, including $1,200 in savings. They crossed the Rio Grande on foot a week and a half ago and were swiftly detained by Border Patrol. They were held with 27 women and children for days without being allowed to bathe, she said. The room was so cramped, she said, they had to sit on the concrete floor side by side to sleep.
On Monday, Cac Pop was released with her daughter, while her sister-in-law and the baby stayed behind. She watched from the motel balcony late Tuesday for the white Border Patrol buses to arrive, hoping to reunite with them.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5bd0b01c/t...tures-010/2000A day after being released from detention, Anna Francisco Pasqual and her children look out from an El Paso motel where they are staying. Genaro Molina / Los Angeles TimesAt her feet, her daughter played with three pipe-cleaner figures she had made of her family. Sometimes she’d hold the largest figure to her cheek and murmur, “Papa, I miss you.”
When Cac Pop spotted a Border Patrol bus pulling up, she cried, “More are coming!”
Fathers filed off the bus with small children clinging to their necks and legs. Many had yet to replace shoelaces confiscated by Border Patrol, or to remove the Border Patrol claim tags attached to their bags. Some wore ankle monitors. Everyone reeked, and when volunteers told them they could shower, they laughed with relief. Many headed first to the food tent for vegetable soup.
Cac Pop lingered outside despite the desert evening chill and a light rain, scanning the new arrivals’ faces. Some were familiar, but her sister-in- law and her child were was not among them. Maybe tomorrow, she said — when the next buses were expected.
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