EL PASO, Texas — A chartered bus carrying migrants is scheduled to leave El Paso for New York on Tuesday, marking the first time city and county officials have agreed to work with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The move reflects a deepening scramble to better manage increasing migration into Texas and is particularly noteworthy because El Paso largely touts its historic role as the Ellis Island of the southwest.
Monday, Venezuelan immigrant Daniela Linares, 23, waited at Opportunity Center’s Welcome Center, near the international bridge, to hop on a bus that would take her to meet her husband already on the East Coast. A smuggler in Mexico told her to reroute through Ciudad Juárez, across from this city, because passage through Piedras Negras and into Eagle Pass was too difficult.
The Eagle Pass region has become the busiest crossing point for the U.S. Border Patrol along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.
“I left because there is nothing for me in Venezuela,” Linares said. “No food. No medicine. No electricity. Nothing but misery.”
El Paso Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino confirmed the city’s emergency management office was working with the state of Texas to provide transportation for migrants that do not have sponsors.
“This issue remains a humanitarian concern for the City of El Paso and the Office of Emergency Management due to the increasing number of migrants passing through the region, limited federal and local shelter capacities, and (an) increasing number of migrants that are not sponsored or have means to travel,” D’Agostino said in an emailed statement.
A bus was originally scheduled to leave Monday to Chicago, but only five migrants volunteered, not enough migrants to justify the trip to the Windy City, said John Martin, deputy director of El Paso’s Opportunity Center for the Homeless. The migrants have been processed by federal immigration authorities for entry into the U.S.
Busing migrants was originally initiated earlier this year by Abbott, a Republican running for reelection and a politician believed to have presidential aspirations. Abbott has repeatedly used the buses as a way to ramp up the rhetoric against migrants and what he calls failed policies of the administration of President Joe Biden.
Since April, more than 7,400 migrants had been sent to Washington, D.C., and, since August, more than 1,500 migrants have been sent to New York City, a spokesperson for Abbott said.
“The busing mission is providing much-needed relief to our overwhelmed border communities,” the governor’s press office said in a prepared statement.
But in El Paso, nonprofit leaders sidestepped the politics and watched their language. “We’re trying to avoid getting into politics,” said Martin, deputy director, whose center is helping assist in the bus trips. “Our focus is on the human element.”
Since Aug. 23, four buses have departed from El Paso to New York City, funded by the El Paso City-County Office of Emergency Management. That agency will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the deputy city manager said.
The movement of migrants away from El Paso, a city of 680,000, coincided with the closure of a shelter that had housed migrants in the past.
Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that runs more than a dozen shelters in the El Paso, southern New Mexico region, coordinated chartered buses to come to Dallas, a major transportation hub, back in June. Their arrival was assisted by faith-based groups stationed at the Oak Lawn United Methodist Church.
Annunciation House’s founder, Ruben García, on Monday cited the Bible’s passages about welcoming the stranger, and said faith groups could all pitch in to help immigrants, whom he calls refugees fleeing desperate conditions. “Then the border, the entire border, would not have an issue because we would be able to transport refugees as they arrive on the border to faith communities in Los Angeles, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle, Spokane ... No one would be burdened.”
But this year as the Border Patrol faced rising numbers of migrants, Garcia said “no one was prepared.”
“The thing that is frustrating for me is that politicians get into this to play politics with human beings,” García said.
Fernando García, the executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, shared the frustration, accusing city officials of a lack of transparency. “This is not a crisis,” García said. “The city is being naive in bringing in the (Texas State National) guard whose presence promotes Abbott’s distorted narrative of reality at the border.”
Garcia contended that so much law enforcement clustered in the Eagle Pass region and Rio Grande Valley, the two busiest routes for migrants, means migrants now seek passage through El Paso.
The number of migrants is reaching new highs and is expected to surpass 2 million this fiscal year. But a fifth to a quarter of those migrants have made repeat tries, inflating numbers because of a pandemic-related health order without legal consequences for those attempting unlawful entry again.
Advocates say that Title 42 cripples the ability of migrants to ask for asylum, which they have a lawful right to do. Others have said that not all immigrants are asking for asylum, or qualify for what’s narrowly defined as asylum.
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(Corchado reported from El Paso; Solis reported from Dallas.)
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