Thread: TX - Large group of migrants reportedly dropped off at bus station

by Claudia Tristán / Trisha GarciaSunday, December 23rd 2018


Migrants reportedly dropped off at downtown bus station. (KDBC)

EL PASO, Texas (KDBC) — Dozens of immigrants have reportedly been dropped off at the downtown Greyhound bus station just two days before Christmas.

Claudia Tristán
‏@ClaudiaKFOX_CBS

Dozens of #immigrants released at the downtown Greyhound station two days before #Christmas. #ElPaso

7:23 PM - 23 Dec 2018

El Paso police are on the scene working to control the crowd.

Claudia Tristán
‏@ClaudiaKFOX_CBS

.@EPPOLICE are also on site trying to organize the crowd that was dropped off tonight at the Greyhound station in downtown.

7:35 PM - 23 Dec 2018 from Greyhound Bus Lines

Several immigrants tell CBS4 that they have not eaten today and have no money to call family members, let alone to buy a bus ticket.

CBS4 has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment. Due to the government shutdown, representatives for those organizations could be furloughed and not available.

This is a developing story.

https://cbs4local.com/news/local/lar...at-bus-station

WELL YOU ALL NEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN YOU SHOULD HAVE PACK A LUNCH . WELL NEXT TIME STAY THE HELL HOME
MERRY CHRISTMAS

Right O, southBronx!!!

And Merry Christmas to you and yours!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERY ONE & HAPPY NEW YEAR'S TO ALL( HAY DEM DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID MERRY CHRISTMAS & I HAVE CANDY CANE & ALL THE THING YOU DON'T LIKE )

MERRY CHRISTMAS SOUTHBRONX

Immigrants taken to hotels, schools after being dropped off in downtown El Paso

by Simon Williams
Monday, December 24th 2018



More than 200 immigrants spent the first hours of Christmas Eve at a Greyhound bus station in downtown El Paso after they were reportedly dropped off by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Sunday night.


EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14) — More than 200 immigrants spent the first hours of Christmas Eve at a Greyhound bus station in downtown El Paso after they were reportedly dropped off by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Sunday night.

KFOX14 was first at the scene and watched as adult migrants, small children, and infants were loaded onto Sun Metro buses and eventually taken to hotels and schools throughout the Borderland.

The immigrants were dropped off in groups on Sunday night, reportedly by ICE.

Several of the immigrants told KFOX14 they had not eaten all day and with no money to buy food, make calls, or buy a bus ticket to meet with family members living in the U.S., they shared their concerns.

“In the middle of the night, they dropped us off here,” said Roberto, an immigrant from Guatemala.

“We don’t have anything,” he said, “nothing to make calls, nothing to buy a ticket.”

Carlos, an immigrant from Honduras feeling a similar sentiment, said, “We’re not in our own country, we don’t know where we are.”

He continued, “But we have confidence in God that we’ll all be OK.”

Shortly after word got out, El Pasoans showed up at the Greyhound Station with pizza, fruit, and water for the immigrants.

They waited at the station for hours. They were told there was nowhere to take them and that the Annunciation House of El Paso was already full.

Very few immigrants were able to have family members living in the U.S. buy them a bus or plane ticket.

For the large majority of immigrants, though, Sun Metro was called in and the immigrants were put onto five buses.

The Annunciation House says those buses would take the migrants to schools and hotels throughout the Borderland for shelter.

The last of the buses left just before 2:00 a.m. Monday. Others waited overnight in the Greyhound lobby for their morning buses.

KFOX14 reached out to ICE, but with the government shutdown, the spokesperson is not required to work.

Those wishing to donate can bring underwear, shirts in small sizes, tote bags, and hygiene products to the Annunciation House in downtown El Paso.

https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/immigr...wntown-el-paso

Originally Posted by southBronx

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERY ONE & HAPPY NEW YEAR'S TO ALL( HAY DEM DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID MERRY CHRISTMAS & I HAVE CANDY CANE & ALL THE THING YOU DON'T LIKE )

LOL!!! Funny!! Made me laugh out loud!! Merry Christmas, my dear friend! I hope you and your family and your friend who waited so long for a new job who found one have the best Christmas ever!!

Trump and DHS seem to be attempting to do the best they can to hide their catch & release program from the public eye. Why else would they be dropping these illegal aliens off to disappear into our interior at midnight?

Good! No taxpayer funded lunch or a bus ticket for you criminal trespassing leeches!


WHY ARE WE "DROPING" THEM OFF ANYWHERE!

WE SHOULD NOT BE TRANSPORTING THEM TO A BUS STATION EITHER!

LET THEM CALL UBER!!!

NO LUNCH, NO MEDICAL CARE, NO BUS RIDE, NO SCHOOL, NO AIRPLANE RIDE! WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO PROVIDE THIS.

GO HOME!!!

THIS IS NOT AN "ALL INCLUSIVE" VACATION TO CLUB MED...GO WHINE TO YOUR PRESIDENT!

NO REWARDING ILLEGAL ALIENS! NO PAPERS, NO ENTRY, NO RIGHTS TO BE HERE!

WE OWE THEM NOTHING!

Hundreds of Asylum Seekers Being Released on El Paso Streets Over Christmas

Immigration authorities dropped busloads of immigrants at a Greyhound bus station without giving warning to local officials, despite having promised to do so.



Several migrant families await food after being dropped off at a bus station in El Paso Robert Moore

Despite acknowledging that they “dropped the ball” by releasing more than 200 asylum seekers onto the streets of El Paso without money or means of transportation—or without warning local officials—Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials said they plan to release hundreds more over Christmas, U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke told Texas Monthly Monday. The move over the holiday has local government officials and nonprofit leaders scrambling to house and feed the unexpected onslaught of immigrants.
The move is the latest salvo by the Trump administration on the immigration front, coming as the federal government is experiencing a partial shutdown of services over an impasse on whether money should be allocated to build a border wall just blocks from where the asylum seekers in El Paso were released. Witnesses believed the move was especially insensitive coming just before Christmas and sparking chaos among volunteers and city officials intent on trying to prevent immigrants from having to sleep on the streets.
O’Rourke and other leaders said ICE reneged on a promise in October not to make large, unannounced releases of migrants into the community, and instead work with nonprofits and governments to place them in shelters through an orderly process. That commitment came after ICE dropped off about 100 migrants without notice at the Greyhound station near downtown El Paso. An ICE spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment, likely because she was furloughed because of the partial government shutdown triggered by a fight between congressional Democrats and President Trump over $5 billion in funding for a border wall. O’Rourke said there was no indication that the release of the migrants without notice was tied to the shutdown.
“ICE admitted that they dropped the ball, that they made a mistake yesterday by not giving the community any kind of heads-up on releasing 214 migrants at the Greyhound bus station last night and early this morning,” O’Rourke said. “They said that they would give us a heads-up going forward although they promised to do that before.” O’Rourke spoke at a fire station across the street from the Greyhound station, where migrant families were taken to be fed.



O’Rourke said that in addition to more than 200 people released Sunday and an expected 200 on Monday, another 200 people are expected to be released on Christmas Day and a similar number the day after. His successor in Congress, Representative-elect Veronica Escobar, said the plan is to place them in hotel rooms across the city, with the cost being borne by Annunciation House, a nonprofit that has cared for migrants in El Paso for four decades.
“And that means depleting Annunciation House of its financial resources. And we’re only talking about the shelter at that point. We’re not even talking about the need for more volunteers and more food, more supplies, etcetera. So this is just a terrible crisis, during the most difficult time to get volunteers,” said Escobar, who takes office January 3. She and other El Paso leaders are urging people to donate to Annunciation House and are trying to rally community volunteers to feed the migrant families.
Federal immigration agencies for decades have had an agreement with Annunciation House to release migrants to its temporary care. ICE takes custody of people apprehended by Border Patrol for illegally crossing the border, but has limited capacity for holding people long-term, especially families. Migrants generally stay at an Annunciation House shelter for a day or two while arranging transportation to join families elsewhere in the United States while their asylum and deportation cases are heard in courts. Such releases are usually carefully planned, but that didn’t happen Sunday night.
ICE buses suddenly began dropping off migrant families at El Paso’s Greyhound station at about 7 p.m. Sunday. A small group of El Pasoans began responding with food and water. My wife and I brought 50 pounds of oranges and a big box of granola bars; others brought pizza. People bringing in food were quickly swarmed by families.
Many of the migrants had no idea where they were. “El Paso, Tejas,” Greyhound employees and volunteers told them. Many asked to borrow phones so they could call relatives to begin the process of getting bus tickets to be with family elsewhere in the United States.
The decision by ICE to drop the families at a private business necessitated a response by a large number of El Paso police officers, who were redeployed from other areas to provide security and help find shelter. Five El Paso Sun Metro buses came to the scene, prepared to take the families to shelter once it became available. County Judge Ruben Vogt came to the Greyhound station to coordinate emergency response. O’Rourke and Escobar worked the phones to find shelter for the families.
Eventually, Annunciation House rented additional motel rooms and found space at a Catholic school for about 150 people. Greyhound allowed another 50 or so with early morning bus tickets to stay overnight. City buses, escorted by police, took the migrants to their temporary homes between midnight and 1 a.m. Annunciation House had taken in another 200 migrants earlier in the day, filling up all of the agency’s more than 1,500 available beds. Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia said fewer bus seats are available over the holidays, so migrants are staying longer in temporary shelters, taxing his organization’s capacity.
Since October, ICE has been releasing 200 or more migrants a day to Annunciation House while the migrants work with their families to get a bus or plane ticket to join them elsewhere in the United States. The released migrants—mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—generally have been found by asylum officers to have a credible fear of persecution if returned to their home countries, which allows them to begin the challenging legal process of seeking asylum in the United States.


El Paso police were dispatched to a Greyhound bus station for crowd control after federal immigration officials unexpectedly released hundreds of asylum seekers at the station on Sunday and Monday.
Robert Moore
Although media and political focus has been on the Tijuana-San Diego area because of the so-called migrant caravans, the bulk of Central American migrants crossing the border are doing so in two Texas Border Patrol sectors—the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, and El Paso in West Texas and all of New Mexico. More than 48,000 members of what the government calls “family units” were apprehended at the Southwest border in October and November, the largest monthly numbers for such apprehensions on record. More than 34,000 of those apprehensions were in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors. Although family apprehensions are at record highs, overall apprehensions are a fraction of what they were a decade ago.

Escobar said ICE has found ways in the past to handle surges of migrant families to ensure their safe and orderly processing. In the last major surge in 2016, ICE set up a temporary processing center in the El Paso County town of Tornillo—the current site of a tent facility for migrant children—to process asylum claims and handle an orderly release to Annunciation House.
“There’s absolutely no reason why those temporary holding facilities cannot be set up once again, no reason,” Escobar said. “The blueprint exists and frankly the money obviously exists because the Tornillo child prison seems to get a blank check. So there’s money there. I don’t understand why federal law enforcement has failed to use this solution that worked so well in 2016.”

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/hu...ets-christmas/