DOUGLAS — A white U. S. Border Patrol bus. The U. S. Geological Surgeon General broke into the parking lot of the Douglas Visitor Center shortly before 8 a. m. m. Wednesday morning, with dozens of asylum seekers that agents had processed hours earlier.
They were among the growing number of asylum seekers released through the Border Patrol at this border, the city and other southern Arizona communities after Title 42 restrictions ended last week. Asylum seekers are now transported across the state directly to Phoenix. Communities do not have shelters to accommodate asylum seekers.
Two idle charter buses were waiting in the parking lot for the Border Patrol bus to arrive. Three officers got off the white bus and helped disembark the asylum seekers, directing them to one of the two buses.
As the buses pulled out of the parking lot, Dennis Walto took a few steps away. He is the External Affairs Manager for Chiricahua Community Health Centers, a non-profit rural fitness clinic in Cochise County.
Walto has been observing bus transfers every day since the program went live last week. He applauded the coordination between the U. S. Border Patrol and the U. S. Border Patrol. U. S. Department of Energy, city officials, and devoted organizations in Douglas to help obtain and treat others in an orderly manner.
“It’s a network with limited resources anyway, however, the fact that everyone stepped in and stepped up speaks to the network,” Walto said.
“That’s what it looks like. “
Douglas, a border city of nearly 15,500 more people in southeastern Arizona, is about 70 miles south of Interstate 10, the nearest major transportation corridor, and 185 miles from the nearest airport in Tucson.
But as of last week, it’s one of many small rural communities along the Arizona-Mexico border where Border Patrol agents are releasing asylum seekers on parole into the United States.
In anticipation of the completion of Title 42, a pandemic-era fitness rule that expired May 11, large numbers of migrants had arrived at the U. S. -Mexico border. Border officials predicted it would be the start of a sustained wave of asylum seekers trying to succeed at the U. S. southern border.
That happened. Migrant encounters along the U. S. -Mexico border have halved since last week, according to the U. S. Department of Homeland Security.
“We attribute the relief in the encounters at our border either to the consequences we have and put in position for the illegal access and legal channels that we have expanded, but also to the movements of our foreign partners,” Blas Nuñez-Neto, deputy secretary of DHS. Border Policy and Immigration told reporters Wednesday.
Although this sustained buildup did not happen, U. S. Border Patrol agents were not allowed to do so. The U. S. Department of Defense released asylum seekers into small communities along Arizona’s border with Mexico for more than a week.
These communities are located next to border patrol posts where agents apprehend and process immigrants. Border agents release an average of 150 asylum seekers in Douglas every day. In Bisbee, that’s about 120 more people a day.
Since those small communities lack the infrastructure needed to move or transport asylum seekers, on May 8, the state government ordered through Gov. Katie Hobbs to pay for charter buses to send them from the border to Tucson and Phoenix, the two main shipping hubs in Arizona. There, asylum seekers can take buses or planes to destinations elsewhere in the United States.
“We just hope everything continues because, for us, we don’t have facilities,” Bisbee Mayor Ken Budge said.
In his city, border agents drop off asylum seekers in the parking lot of the nearby Brian A Border Patrol station. he freed them, according to Budge.
“There is no transportation, there is no train, there are no other buses, there is no public transport leaving here, so it would be complicated for (immigrants) to leave here,” he added.
A helping hand: the name 42 is finished. Here’s how humanitarian teams in Phoenix are ready to help
From May 8 to May 14, the state transported 3,025 asylum seekers on 87 buses, according to Judy Kioski, public data officer for the Arizona Department of Military and Emergency Affairs. It is the state firm that coordinates with local governments and nonprofits to save you, the migrants, from being released or stranded on the streets of southern Arizona.
Typically, nonprofits like Casa Alitas of Tucson and the Somerton Regional Center for Border Health won over asylum seekers and transported them to Phoenix or Tucson once they were released in southern Arizona.
They helped organize their adventure to their final destinations, but also provided accommodation, food, and others such as medical exams and vaccinations.
However, if there is a backlog of arrivals, shelters can succeed in their capacity and can no longer settle for asylum seekers.
The Border Patrol can only hold migrants for a certain period of time in its facilities, and if the company is also at full capacity, it uses probation for asylum seekers directly in border communities that are not available to help them.
It is unclear how long the network exits will last. Border Patrol officials in Arizona responded to requests for comment.
But it’s happened before. From October 2018 to 2021, the Border Patrol released asylum seekers directly from their patrol posts near small communities like Ajo or Gila Bend as they struggled with the capacity of their detention centers. The press releases surprised network leaders as they rushed to respond. and send them to Phoenix and Tucson.
This time, those communities are prepared.
By the end of Title 42, southern Arizona was ready for the arrival of more asylum seekers at the border and eventual releases. An extensive network of communication, transport and accommodation that had evolved since the first series of street exits of the network has been put in place. And the state government has played a more active role.
Initially, DEMA-chartered buses transported asylum seekers from Nogales, Naco, Douglas and Bisbee to Casa Alitas in Tucson twice a day when bus routes began May 8.
Opinion: Arizona border chaos becomes inevitable as Title 42 ends
But Tucson’s shelters are fit and can’t accommodate more people, according to Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher.
This border county has played a leading role in the humanitarian response in southern Arizona. It recently won $29 million from the federal government for transportation and housing for asylum seekers, which the county can then distribute to nonprofits and local governments it partners with.
On average, Tucson gained about 1,400 asylum seekers per day, Lesher told Pima County commissioners at a town hall Tuesday. This includes others released by the U. S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Given limited resources, the county manager told officials to look for a new solution and look further north.
“We now have a formula where if other people have been detained in Douglas, Naco, Nogales, they will be returned to the Phoenix domains to be protected,” Lesher said. in a way that we get those other people that the Border Patrol’s dominance of Tucson is disappointing in our community.
Starting Wednesday, Kioski said charter buses leaving southeastern Arizona would make a 4-hour trip to Tucson’s Phoenix, where there is greater capacity to help asylum seekers. DEMA has already been operating a bus from Somerton to Phoenix since May 9, he added. .
But the new procedure for transporting asylum seekers out of those small communities in southern Arizona has run into problems.
In Ouglas, migrants were first dropped off in the Walmart parking lot near the port of entry. However, after store managers objected, the location was replaced at the Douglas Visitor Center on Friday.
Douglas Mayor Donald Huish and Budge, the mayor of Bisbee, said they were pleased with how the state’s bus program had helped their communities stay calm.
Related: Here’s what you can expect at the Arizona-Mexico border this week now that the title is gone
However, the two mayors called on the federal to intervene and take charge of a national issue, which is lately being processed in the state.
“Between us and Nogales, we are calm,” Huish said. (The Biden administration) still has a big challenge to solve, and I hope it is not possibly forgotten nationally. “
Across Arizona’s border from Mexico, Fernando Quiroz, director of the Yuma-based AZ-CA Humanitarian Coalition, independently chartered 4 buses of farm staff to send asylum seekers to a church in Phoenix that also accepted capacity limitations given in that area.
Quiroz coordinated the May 12 effort for asylum seekers to succeed in their final destinations in the U. S. The U. S. government because nonprofits in Yuma County were at full capacity.
With shelters and resources in southern Arizona depleted, the Phoenix metropolitan domain will begin to see more asylum seekers arrive in the coming days.
The Regional Border Health Center is already transporting migrants from Yuma to Sky Harbor International Airport.
But Phoenix also has a permanent migrant shelter with 340 beds and a network of churches that can also take in asylum seekers when needed.
Montevista Church of Phoenix was one of the first to obtain asylum seekers from southern Arizona on Thursday. Pastor Angel Campos told The Arizona Republic that ICE officials had dropped off 24 people, mostly from the Yuma area.
The Department of Emergency and Military Affairs dropped 81 asylum seekers off at the church Thursday after they were released in Cochise County and transported to Tucson, Campos said.
Officials will send an email to the church the day before to estimate how many other people will be left behind so members can prepare.
Campos said the completion of Title 42 has sparked more fear from elected leaders about housing locations for asylum seekers than he had noticed in recent years. Campos said he won calls from the governor and spoke with several mayors, adding Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego.
“They told me about the emergency that is happening right now, and that if they do not find a place to leave the immigrants, they will have to leave them on the street, and I told them no, they will send them to look for them. ” said Campos.
Good Shepherd Christian Church in Mesa is a church that has agreed to begin receiving others bussed from border communities in southeastern Arizona, said Hector Ramirez, pastor of the church.
The first full bus of asylum seekers will arrive on May 23, once the church has had time to train volunteers to provide humanitarian aid, the pastor added.
Until recently, the church accepted asylum seekers left there by the federal immigration government on Thursdays after they were processed by the Border Patrol’s Yuma sector, Ramirez said.
ICE officials told him Wednesday that they expected to get another 32 people from India, China, Brazil and African countries on Thursday, he added.
The Welcome Center, a 340-bed shelter in Phoenix run by the International Rescue Committee, has already gained asylum seekers left behind in Tucson. Because they still had capacity, middle staff sent buses to take asylum seekers to Phoenix when Casa Alitas in Tucson operated. outside the space, according to Beth Strano, director of the Welcome Center.
Strano declined to say Wednesday whether the center had begun receiving asylum seekers transported from southern Arizona border communities to Phoenix.
Strano said the center gained another 2,000 people in the first two weeks of May. This is on track to surpass the 3,000 asylum seekers the center gained this month. But the 24-hour shelter still has enough space to accommodate asylum seekers brought in Tucson, he added.
“We’ve been busy,” Strano said, but “it hasn’t been a dramatic increase. “
Most of the increase in the number of asylum seekers occurred the week before Title 42 ended just before nine p. m. on May 11, when the center gained about 250 people per day, compared to 110 previously. 250 asylum seekers over the weekend, however, the number appears to be stabilizing and possibly even declining, Strano said.
Like Casa Alitas in Tucson, the front desk receives asylum seekers released by the federal immigration government after crossing the border and processed by Border Patrol agents.
The medium has won asylum seekers from many countries, Strano said. The number one country of origin this year has been India, most commonly Sikhs, Strano said.
The other 10 most sensitive countries of origin are Peru, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Ecuador, Russia, Colombia, Brazil and Mauritania, which have replaced China in 10th place, he said.
The Department of Military and Emergency Affairs also continues to transport asylum seekers from Arizona to nonprofits in Washington. The state government began those efforts last May under Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. But his successor, Democratic Gov. Hobbs, continued that agenda.
Since May 2022, the state government paid for 113 charter buses that transported another 4155 people to Washington on Tuesday. Of this total, the state sent 25 buses with 1,077 asylum seekers in 2023.
Javier Arce, editor-in-chief of lavozarizona. com, contributed to this article.
Do you have a news tip or article about the border and its communities?Contact the journalist on josecastaneda@arizonarepublic. com or attach them on Twitter @joseicastaneda.
Daniel Gonzalez covers race, equity and opportunity. Contact him at daniel. gonzalez@arizonarepublic. com or 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.
Do you have existing tips or concepts for articles on immigration in the Southwest?Contact the reporter on rafael. carranza@arizonarepublic. com or on Twitter at @RafaelCarranza.