For 40 years, a nonprofit organization in El Paso, Texas, operated a 1500-bed shelter for illegal migrants called Casa Del Refugiado. In July, Annunciation House closed the shelter due to “maintenance issues and a lack of volunteers.” The shelter had been swamped by an influx into the area of at least 1,500 migrants–most of them Venezuelans–every day.
Following the shelter’s closing and after enduring several weeks of watching the new arrivals living on the streets, in September the city opened a new center, called the Migrant Welcome Center. The new center can, for up to 300 migrants, provide food, water, basic healthcare, and assistance with communication and travel. But there is a catch: the Welcome Center has no beds.
Thus, the typical migrant being assisted at the Center most needs what it can’t provide–a place to sleep. The problem remains unsolved, and the only possible short-term solutions are (1) finding local alternative housing or (2) shipping the migrants out.
Local alternative housing options are, according to the Guardian newspaper’s website, “bursting at the seams.” That leaves only one option: “get [the migrants] on their way to another city as fast as possible.” To do that, the city has done what Texas Governor Abbott, Arizona’s Governor Ducey, and Florida’s Governor DeSantis, have all done: put them on buses and shipped them north. Last month, the city allocated $2 million to hire buses to export their homeless charges northward. To date, they have charted about 40 buses, which have taken more than 8,000 migrants to New York City and about 2,300 to Chicago.
The Republican governors have been roundly criticized for their actions by the federal government, the mainstream media, and migrant advocates. Not so much, the Democrat-led city of El Paso. Their migrant exports are viewed as “humanitarian necessities,” not “political stunts.”
By any name, the result is the same: a temporary respite from an ongoing problem that never goes away, no matter how many migrants do.
For more, see the Guardian website.