Illegal aliens apprehended in El Paso were transported, released in Tucson
Migrant families apprehended in El Paso were transported, released in Tucson
Rafael Carranza, Arizona RepublicPublished 6:25 a.m. MT March 7, 2019 | Updated 8:19 a.m. MT March 7, 2019
A ride along El Paso's Cesar Chavez Border Highway/Loop 375 offers a look at commuting alongside the border barrier. Samuel Gaytan and Daniel Borunda, El Paso Times
TUCSON — A blue, nondescript van pulled up to the parking lot surrounded by orange trees, just behind the ornate bell tower and facade of the iconic, Spanish Revival-style building standing in the heart of the city for more than 80 years.
Across the parking lot, a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe greeted the six new families inside the van. As the parents — each with a child in tow — stepped off, their faces lit up.
"Buenos días."
One by one they spoke the greeting, nudging their small children to do the same as they walked past volunteers in a single file towards the building's lush courtyard.
For the past month, more than 1,100 mostly Central American families, recently released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have passed through the former Benedictine Monastery in Tucson.
The property was sold to a developer, who plans to build apartments at the historic site.
But while he secures the necessary permits, the new owner offered the space to Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona to operate a shelter for newly released families seeking asylum in the United States.
When it opened as a shelter in early February, the monastery greatly expanded bed space in Tucson for a rising number of families arriving at the Arizona-Mexico border. The building can accommodate 180 to 200 people per night.
Even with the expanded capabilities, non-profit groups in Tucson have struggled to keep up with the number of families ICE has been releasing en masse since October.
"There's still a general increase in the number of folks coming through, and the numbers are still higher than I've seen in the time since we started (housing migrants) almost five years ago now," said Teresa Cavendish, director of operations for Catholic Community Services.
Her group alone has received 2,600 migrants in Tucson since then. The majority are Guatemalan and had either waited to seek asylum at the ports of entry or crossed the border illegally.
At the end of February, with the monastery now open, a different group began to arrive.
U.S. immigration officials dropped off the first of nearly 400 migrants who had turned themselves into agents in El Paso but were now being released in Tucson, 300 miles away.
A group of 376 migrants tunneled underneath the border fence near Yuma on Jan. 14 before turning themselves into border agents, officials said. Courtesy of U.S. Border Patrol
Migrants arriving in El Paso in dramatic numbers
In the past few months, migrant families seeking asylum in the United States have arrived in El Paso in dramatic numbers, surpassing the Yuma area as the second busiest crossing point along the entire southwestern U.S. border. El Paso is now second only to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
According to the latest government statistics, in the first five months of the current fiscal year, the apprehensions of migrants traveling as families has gone up 1,689 percent, compared to the same period last year.
Numbers have risen so drastically there that the release of the families from detention has overwhelmed resources on the ground.
Shelters in the area have been unable to house all of the families and, as a result, many of them wound up on the streets of El Paso, looking for the bus station.
“Our temporary holding facilities were simply not set up to process and care for a population of this size and demographic. This operation is unsustainable both for our operations and for those in our care and custody.”
Carla Provost, Border Patrol chief
To ease the situation, between Feb. 16 and Feb. 18, U.S. Customs and Border Protection in El Paso decided to transport 398 migrants apprehended in their sector to three Border Patrol stations in the neighboring Tucson Sector: Wilcox, Naco and Douglas.
"Capacity at El Paso facilities was approaching 200 percent, which led to the decision," the CBP said in a statement. "No other sectors were involved."
Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost addressed the drastic spike in the arrival of migrant families along the entire U.S.-Mexico border during testimony before lawmakers in Congress on last week.
Provost said asylum-seeking families now make up about 60 percent of all apprehensions in between the ports of entries, and that posed serious challenges for border agents.
"Our temporary holding facilities were simply not set up to process and care for a population of this size and demographic," Provost said. "This operation is unsustainable both for our operations and for those in our care and custody."
She added that nearly 25 percent of the border agents on duty are diverted from enforcement duties along the border to care, transport and process migrant families.
That includes transporting an average of 55 people a day to hospitals, where they have to remain until the migrants are released from care.
Cavendish, with Catholic Community Services, saw a correlation between the saturation on the ground in El Paso and their newly expanded capabilities in Tucson.
"The monastery can hold a population of folks that was untouchable before it became available to any of us," she said. "And so it makes sense that the majority of those folks came to us."
All the migrant families transported from El Paso to Tucson in February have already been released into the custody of relatives living in the United States. Given the situation playing out in El Paso, Cavendish said she would not be surprised if more families are released into their care.
Customs and Border Protection didn't rule out that possibility either, saying that they "continue to look at all options that will allow us to continue to process the individuals that are taken into custody while maintaining effective border security."
Cavendish said that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, given the alternatives.
"It's better to have families come in here and be safe and receive what we're able to offer them, instead of them ending up in a street corner in El Paso looking for the bus station," she said.
Other reasons southern Arizona resources are taxed
The families from El Paso that have been dropped off in Tucson are not the only contributing factors to the surge of releases in the area.
In the past few months, a new trend has also stretched resources in southern Arizona. Large groups of migrants, sometimes numbering as many as 300, are turning themselves in with increasing frequency to border agents, especially in the barren desert of southwestern Arizona near Yuma and Lukeville.
At first, the families apprehended in Yuma, a border community of less than 200,000, would be released there.
Without any permanent infrastructure and little transportation options, community leaders successfully lobbied Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release them in Phoenix and Tucson instead.
Because this is becoming more common — there has been nearly 70 groups of more than 100 people since October, according to Border Patrol — shelters in Tucson have seen great fluctuation in the number of migrants they receive each day.
On a recent afternoon, Gretchen Lopez processed a Guatemalan mother holding her two-month-old child in her arms. They had just arrived an hour earlier.
Lopez runs the Inn Project, the second permanent shelter for migrant families in Tucson, affiliated with the United Methodist Church.
The mother was one of dozens of migrants who nearly filled the shelter that day. It's become the new normal. As these families take off, headed to their relatives' location, more come and take their place.
"We've been more steadily on the more busy side, so we haven't had a day where we've been empty in a couple months now," Lopez said. "It does seem that things might remain more busy now."
Up until this week, the Inn Project had partnered with a church to open up an overflow shelter that could house up to 20 people. After running at full capacity for nearly a month, the church decided last week that it needed to take a break.
With more families continuing to arrive at the border and at their front doors, the shelters are looking at other ways to help take them in.
"I feel guilty when we're not able to house everyone that they need us to. So that has definitely been in my mind, what happens next or what should we be doing now," Lopez said.
For Catholic Community Services, aside from the monastery, they also have a separate, permanent house converted into a shelter. They've also set up a weekly rotation among volunteer churches and parishes to open up a temporary shelter space.
On some days it's not enough.
The monastery will only be available to them until July, Cavendish said, adding to the urgency of finding suitable alternatives to house large number of migrants.
Even without it, she said, it will be hard to scale back on the number of families they help out because the need remains so great.
"We're just not seeing the same kind of rhythms as we have in the past and this is just an indication of the steady increase or maintenance of the current numbers," Cavendish said. "And I don't think that there's any wall or structure or policy that is going to prevent people who are in desperate from going to the only place they think they will find safety."
President Donald Trump is directing migrants to ports of entry to seek asylum, but policy changes are driving some asylum seekers to cross illegally with the help of smugglers. Nick Oza, The Republic | azcentral.com
Migrants find security at monastery
The security migrants feel upon reaching the United States is on display on daily basis at the former Benedictine Monastery.
After getting dropped off, volunteers usher them to the large hall that used to be the church. Its wooden pews are now used as a reception area to provide an orientation to the families. The atrium and altar now function as a makeshift shelter designated for fathers with their male children.
After orientation, they receive a medical screening, a room assignment and an opportunity to call their relatives.
"I feel content, happy, because they received me very warmly, and to see this church which belongs to my religion," Kevin Valdez said.
After three days in detention, immigration officers released him and his 17-year-old daughter to the monastery.
The pair fled violence and extortion from drug gangs in Guatemala, though he left his wife and younger son back there because he couldn't afford money to bring them all.
After two months of traveling, they reached the U.S.-Mexico border, although Valdez said he doesn't know where. There, a group of armed men robbed his traveling group.
"We froze when they said, 'Stop right there,' and they told us to leave our belongings,"he said. "We told them that they were our things, but didn't have any money. 'It doesn't matter, leave that on the floor and if not we'll shoot you on the spot.' So we got scared and we left our things behind."
Now in the United States, Valdez said he felt relieved they both made it safely.
Up next, the two will travel to Dallas, where they will stay with family and make their case as to why they should be allowed to stay in the United States.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...rs/2995413002/
