YUMA, Ariz. — The COVID-19 pandemic is officially over and so is the controversial health policy known as Title 42 that allowed the United States to deny and expel migrants attempting to enter the U.S. at the southern border.
There's a gap in the fence along that border -- and it's far from the only hole.
This spot near Yuma has become a sort of makeshift asylum center where the Border Patrol picks up would-be refugees and takes them into the city of Yuma.
It is a flood of people. 12News cameras watched as hundreds of people were dropped off, loaded onto buses, and taken into town for processing.
A local nonprofit helps these migrants complete their journey into the US as they try to make asylum claims.
The nonprofit is called the Regional Center for Border Health. And 12News spoke to the CEO, Amanda Aguirre, who said she had to step up for a "humanitarian response."
It's the next step in a difficult journey for the thousands of migrants who turn themselves into gaps in the border fencing in Yuma County.
A center in Somerton, a town south of Yuma, isn't a shelter. But there aren't any nearby, and it's here that migrants are given food, water and medicine and also a bus ride into Phoenix to board a plane and go wherever they need to.
The center's goal is to keep people off the streets of Yuma County. They can process 700 a day. But by Friday, Yuma Mayor Doug Nicholls said he expects there will be too many people crossing here to be processed and moved out and some will be released into the streets.
"We expected to have more resources, have more attention and more ability to manage the situation from the federal level than we've had," said Nicholls.
In the end, the U.S. finds itself at a crossroads, a crossroads with no clear path forward.
The Border
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