ARIZONA, USA — New shelters for unaccompanied children and families could soon come to Yuma and Tucson as the U.S. is expected to reach the highest number of people apprehended at the Mexico border in two decades.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said “we are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years” while addressing what he described as a “difficult” situation at the border.
In the statement, Secretary Mayorkas said it has enlisted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up new temporary facilities to house migrant children and families in Arizona and Texas.
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection said it is considering placing facilities in Yuma and Tucson but provided no timeline of when the shelters could be operational nor how many migrants it could house.
The facility would be built from the ground up, and it's something that could take months.
The influx of migrants arriving at the border has created a backlog in Border Patrol stations with other 4,200 children in custody and almost 3,000 being held over the 72-hour legal limit.
Just in the Tucson sector, Border Patrol agents encountered 1,381 unaccompanied minors in February compared to 865 the previous month.
Migrant family apprehension numbers rose from 388 to 976 at the same time.
“We don’t have actual housing, so we’re not prepared for it,” said Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino. Who says even before financial damages by the pandemic, the city is not equipped to handle such an increase in migration numbers.
Now after a year with COVID, most of Nogales' non-profits are barely functioning and open, and many are not able to assist migrants or transport them if that was needed of them.
That is why border leaders are urging more input from the federal government to combat the situation.
“If they expect us to be prepared for this, we’re probably going to need some type of funding from the federal government,” Garino said.
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