U.S. facilities destined to sheltering migrants have been strained to a point in which some have started to release people onto the streets, as the amount of unlawful border encounters continues to break records, according to a report by NBC News.
Concretely, three Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told the outlet that a large number of migrants in Tucson, Arizona, were released onto the streets before being taken to final destinations in coordination with city officials and local nonprofits.
Customs and Border Protection authorities informed that a new record was set on Wednesday after officials apprehended more than 12,000 migrants in a single day on the southwest border. Nearly 11,000 of them crossed illegally between ports of entry, the officials said.
NBC said that CBP processing centers are not often at double their capacity and agents are dropping off buses filled with migrants every 30 minutes in Nogales, Arizona, to alleviate the amount of people in processing centers.
A similar situation is unfolding in Eagle Pass, in Texas, where federal facilities are at almost three times their capacity. All of them, however, have court dates and locations for immigration hearings, DHS officials told the outlet.
Also this week, Texas authorities sent for the first time a flight with asylum seekers to Chicago, expanding the scope of its Lone Star operation to take migrants to other parts of the country, mostly to Democrat-run sanctuary cities.
"Until Biden steps up to secure the border, we will continue to provide overwhelmed Texas border towns with much-needed relief," said Texas Governor Greg Abbott about the decision.
Sanctuary city Chicago started obstructing and targeting our busing mission.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 20, 2023
Texas will now expand our operation to include flights to Chicago.
Until Biden steps up to secure the border, we will continue to provide overwhelmed Texas border towns with much-needed relief. pic.twitter.com/kRoK8KBpJ2
Overall, more than 30,000 migrants have been taken to Chicago since August 2022. The city is struggling to provide shelter to all and faced a new setback last week after receiving an environmental report on a proposed shelter location.
In this context, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Thursday, blaming him for the border crisis and urging him to take executive actions "to stem the record tide of illegal immigration."
"While a bipartisan group of Senators has begun extensive negotiations over the past few weeks to try to find a compromise, they have not yet been able to finalize an agreement," reads a passage of Johnson's letter.
"Statutory reforms designed to restore operational control at our southern border must be enacted, but the crisis at our southern border has deteriorated to such an extent that significant action can wait no longer. "It must start now, and it must start with you," the speaker added.
Biden, on his end, talked to his Mexican counterpart, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, over the phone on Thursday, and they both agreed to take additional enforcement actions at their shared border to manage the movement of migrants who are crossing.
During the said phone call, Biden and López Obrador discussed the "ongoing efforts to manage migratory flows in the Western Hemisphere, building on the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection that President Biden launched in Los Angeles in June 2022," as per the official White House statement.
The leaders then came to an agreement that "additional enforcement actions are urgently needed so that key ports of entry can be reopened across our shared border."
© 2023 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
