The city of El Paso, Texas, provides one of many examples demonstrating how the migrant crisis is affecting border towns. The influx of illegal aliens and asylum seekers has overwhelmed the city to the point that it has had to transport individuals to other places like New York City and Chicago.
Fox News reported on how El Paso’s homeless shelters are filled to capacity amid the ongoing migrant crisis.
“Elected officials and nonprofit organizations have taken swift action in the face of an overwhelming surge of migrants in El Paso, getting people sheltered or on a bus to other U.S. cities as quickly as possible,” according to the report.
City officials are working to prevent a situation in which migrants are camping out on city streets, which has happened as recently as last week. Some members of staff indicated the flow of asylum seekers has slowed down, which has given them some breathing room. But they fear this downtime will be short-lived.
“I know we’re still expecting to get more because [immigration officials] are planning to start releasing more at a time, I just don’t know when,” said Nicole Reulet, the marketing director for the Rescue Mission of El Paso. “This is a nice little calm, but I feel like there’s a storm coming.”
Reulet said her organization has been stretching itself thin, especially after federal immigration officials dropped off a busload of migrants right outside the center on Sept. 8 with no warning. Since then, the shelter has handled over 400 migrants.
“It is straining,” Reulet said. “I don’t know how long we can do it for.”
Fox News reported:
Border Patrol agents at the El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico, have encountered an average of 1,500 migrants per day this month, according to US Border Patrol. Across the entire southern border, agents have logged more than 2.1 million migrant encounters so far in Fiscal Year 2022, exceeding last year’s total of about 1.7 million encounters and more than quadruple the number of encounters in fiscal year 2020.
El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, a Democrat, explained what the city is doing to accommodate the arrivals during a conversation with Fox.
“We offer them hotels, we offer them shelter, and we have a welcoming center,” he said. “We’ll continue to make sure people are not released into the street.”
But what is also noteworthy about this situation is that the city has been busing migrants to New York City and Chicago since August. Indeed, it has sent over 60 busloads to these cities, and recently approved a $2 million contract to continue transporting illegals and asylum seekers to other areas of the country, as well.
The Texan reported:
According to city officials, El Paso has sent over 1,000 noncitizens to New York since August 23 and is continuing to charter buses as long as the flow continues.
Funding for the buses is paid for by the El Paso Office of Emergency Management and reimbursed by the federal government.
The city passed an emergency ordinance in May which allowed it to use “the expenditure of public funds for staff to … transport migrants released in the City of El Paso [for the] valid public purpose of protecting public infrastructure, and protecting the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of El Paso.”
During a city council meeting, Mayor Leeser stressed that the situation “is not an El Paso thing, it’s a federal issue,” and that the city is “assisting the federal government in this program.”
The mayor differentiated El Paso’s program from Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants and illegals to blue cities, insisting that “What we’re doing is not to be compared to what’s going on in the state of Texas. We need to take politics out of what’s going on.”
In an appearance on ABC News, Leeser detailed how the city assists the migrants coming over the border.
“We talk to them and we say, where do you want to go? What’s your destination? We help them get where they want to go. 50 percent of the people coming do not have a sponsor, they don’t have money,” he explained.
“We…make sure that we always continue to treat people like human beings.”
As El Paso begins sending buses of migrants north, Mayor Oscar Leeser tells @jonkarl that their goal is to assist in transportation needs for those without sponsors, money. https://t.co/S3kvte6GYi pic.twitter.com/sRSGkSQOD3
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 18, 2022
Nevertheless, one would think Democrats would still have issues with El Paso transporting migrants to other areas of the country. After all, why should a border town be allowed to engage in “human trafficking”? Perhaps they are only okay with it because it involves federal funding and the city is run by a Democratic mayor. Or maybe the city’s actions have been eclipsed by the Abbott Express, which has been in business since April.
Either way, this is only a glimpse into what border towns are dealing with. The same has been occurring in Arizona since last year. Gila Bend was forced to declare a state of emergency because it could not handle the number of migrants being dropped off by Border Patrol.
This is the reason why Republican governors are shipping illegals and migrants to the blue cities that pretend to care about them. Why should cities like El Paso and Gila Bend be forced to bear the brunt of the consequences of the open borders policies these people support?
