The massive arrival of migrants to the border city of El Paso, in Texas, is causing situations of discrimination such as the fact that there are shelters that do not accept people who have crossed into the United States irregularly.
At least three shelters in the city, including a huge refuge inaugurated on Thursday with a capacity for 1,500 people, reject these migrants, according to EFE, in one of them and witnesses told about the other two.
Hundreds of people, mostly Venezuelans, have been forced in recent days to sleep on the streets in freezing temperatures, wrapped in blankets donated by good Samaritans. The situation will worsen this weekend, when a winter storm hits the city.
Less than 200 meters from an area where many have settled, the city of El Paso opened the Convention Center as a shelter on Thursday, with the help of Red Cross volunteers. However, its doors are closed to migrants who entered the country irregularly. “To sleep here, they have to have documentation. If they entered the country illegally, they cannot enter,” a city worker told EFE at the entrance to the building. In addition to this center, EFE learned of two other shelters in the city that do not receive people without immigration status. On Thursday night, covered from head to toe in blankets that the residents of El Paso passed by to give them, the migrants tried to protect themselves from the inclement cold.
Local authorities (Police and officials from the Emergency Office) began to approach the area to inform them that there was a shelter, run by the Catholic Church and several kilometers away, that was receiving people regardless of their immigration status. “I don’t want to be deported, I have struggled a lot to get here,” Kevin (fictitious name to hide his identity) told EFE, who was skeptical of the agents’ offer.
The same people who for days repeated the message that to enter a shelter they had to have papers, now tried to convince them that the situation had changed.
Some 30 migrants accepted the officials’ proposal, however, many stayed sleeping outdoors because they distrusted the offer.
The mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, declared a state of emergency in the city last Saturday to attend to the arrival of thousands of migrants to that town, precisely with the aim of being able to give more people a roof during the winter season.
Title 42 was imposed by Donald Trump
Title 42, a federal regulation imposed by Donald Trump and maintained by the current Democratic Administration, allows authorities to immediately expel migrants from Venezuela who arrive at the border, without giving them the opportunity to request asylum. Desperate at the prospect of staying in Mexico indefinitely, many decide to take the risk and cross the border undetected by border authorities.
