EL PASO — With hundreds of migrants sleeping in downtown streets, city and federal authorities continue to take dramatic steps to relieve pressure on this border city hit with the latest humanitarian migrant crisis since the beginning of the month.
The drama is playing out in the backdrop of quiet diplomatic effort by the Biden administration, as reported by Reuters earlier this week, to press the administration of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to accept more migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela under a COVID-19 expulsion order that the White House publicly wants to end.
The issue was raised this week during a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a Mexican official confirmed to The Dallas Morning News but gave no indication of what Mexico would do.
Here in El Paso, the majority of the migrants come from Venezuela, where the exodus has picked up speed in recent weeks. Once released by Border Patrol because its processing center and area shelters are full, they’re dropped near the downtown Greyhound bus station. There, disheveled migrants rest on the concrete, searching for shade for their crying children. The air smells of urine, as temperatures rise to the 90s.
It was a classic scene of migrant displacement. But this time it hit a proud city of the U.S. with fulfilled aspirations as a trade capital and the largest urban area along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In the past 24 to 48 hours, the situation has been “dramatically deactivated, for now,” said Landon Hutchens, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, using military metaphors. “The Department of Homeland Security and other departments also continue to work with Mexico and other countries in the region to address migration challenges throughout the Western Hemisphere.”
El Paso declared an emergency humanitarian crisis Monday, and the city council approved a $2 million contract through December with Dallas-based Gogo Charters to provide up to five buses per day.
Since Aug. 23, El Paso’s Office of Emergency Management has chartered at least 28 buses to New York City, the “preferred destination for those without any means to travel,” according to an update from the city of El Paso.
Despite the pressure, the city and county prefer to use federal emergency funds rather than seek help from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made busing migrants to cities run by Democrats a part of his Operation Lone Star. The policy is seen by some leaders in this largely Democratic community as a “political stunt” to benefit the Republican governor, who is campaigning for reelection.
“We need humanitarian assistance, not political exploitation,” said El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, who explained the county is working to convert an old arena used in the past for roller derby games into a temporary shelter for migrants. “Our goal is to treat migrants with humanity and dignity.”
Abbott, though, portrays the rise in migrants as people who “endangered and overwhelmed Texas communities for almost two years.”
On average, the El Paso region of the U.S. Border Patrol has taken about 1,300 migrants a day into custody in September, up from May’s high of 1,000 per day, according to U.S. CBP data. Agents were forced this week to set up mobile processing in the neighborhood known as Chihuahuita near an international bridge.
People are given dates to appear in immigration court and sent on their way to the streets in what Border Patrol calls “provisional releases.”
Most of those arriving at the Texas-Mexico border in El Paso are from Venezuela.
A majority of Venezuelans who have arrived at the Texas border had crossed through the Del Rio-Eagle Pass region — the same area that a year ago became the site of a large migrant encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande.
In the first 10 months of fiscal 2022, CBP encountered more than 130,000 Venezuelan citizens, up from more than 50,000 Venezuelans taken into custody in fiscal 2021.
Most turn themselves into border agents to seek asylum or other immigration relief. Increasingly, they’re presenting their claims in El Paso. Over the past five days, an average of 660 Venezuelans per day have been processed by immigration agents in El Paso, a spokesman said.
Many Venezuelans first left for other Latin American countries, including Colombia, Ecuador and Chile. Over the past year, their destination seems to be north, a pattern that coincides with the election of progressive leaders that migrants interviewed here, especially those from Venezuela, view with some suspicion.
Arriving migrants say human rights and economic conditions continue to deteriorate in their country under what many fleeing Venezuelans refer to as a “dictatorship.”
Among them is Dayana Cobillan, 29, who, along with her husband, two children, and parents, is headed for Salt Lake City, Utah, where the dominant faith is Mormon, like this family.
Cobillan said she and her family have been on the run for the past nine years. They thought of returning to Venezuela but said they don’t like what they hear from family and friends back home.
“We tried finding a place to live in Chile and then Colombia, but there is a growing backlash against us,” she said. “And the new leaders remind us of Maduro,” referring to the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro.
“They say they are for the people and by the people, but they’re really for themselves. The people suffer, and, eventually, we have to leave,” she added. “We’re just looking for hope for our families.”
The U.S. government has expelled to Mexico a small fraction of arriving Venezuelans under the pandemic-related health order Title 42. The United States suspended its diplomatic relationship with Venezuela in 2019 and cannot easily coordinate expulsion flights.
Every day, El Paso residents have helped men, women and children sleeping on the streets near the bus station.
This week, hundreds of families slept in small donated tents on nights with heavy rainstorms. Many struggled to find bathrooms or a place to shower. The area is just a block from the city’s convention center and the ballpark where the El Paso Chihuahua’s AAA team plays.
Juliana Esparza, a volunteer from the community outreach center Adopt a Mom, a group created during the pandemic to help mothers, from El Paso, to Uvalde and now, migrant mothers, drove through the streets in her SUV looking for mothers to give baby formula, diapers, Tylenol, medication for mosquito bites and baby strollers.
“These mothers can be us,” she said. “All they want is a better future for their families. We can’t forget our own humanity.”
Angela Kocherga is News Director of KTEP Public Radio in El Paso. Staff reporter Dianne Solís contributed to this story.
