EL PASO, Texas — When groups of up to 30 migrants who crossed the southern border with Mexico began emerging here out of sewer manholes, local authorities moved swiftly: they welded the heavy iron covers shut.
If only a larger solution to El Paso’s migrant crisis were so simple.
Officials in this frontier city have been slow to act in the face of a months-long tidal wave of asylum seekers, pouring into town at a rate of up to 900 a day since August, according to municipal statistics.
U.S. Border Patrol agents have “encountered” more than 2,400 migrants per day in a 268-mile stretch of the border known as the El Paso Sector earlier this month, according to statistics published by the city, a 40 percent jump over figures for October.
Confident the desperate visitors would linger just 48 hours in El Paso before being bused to other parts of the country, including the Big Apple, Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser shrugged off critics who said he should have declared a state of emergency.
“The migrants we have welcomed are not threatening our community,” Lesser said in a statement in September. “They are seeking political asylum which is permissible under U.S. law. They stay in our community between 24 to 48-hours, and we help them to reach their destination if they don’t have a sponsor already.”
A state of emergency declaration allows the city to take over buildings to provide housing for migrants and seek emergency funding from the state and federal government.
Instead, migrants have flooded this community of more than 670,000 people, sleeping on the streets and knocking on random residential doors for help .
“The city has been talking for weeks about opening up more shelters,” said one resident who watched a group of migrants clutching white Red Cross-issue blankets as they settled on a downtown sidewalk. “What took them so long?”
The crushing surge of migrants has been spurred by the expected termination of Title 42 on Dec. 21. The controversial Trump-era public health order allows Border Patrol agents to return migrants to Mexico without allowing them to make asylum claims.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Title 42 to remain in place, after several GOP-led states sued the federal government, and the measure is now set to expire after Christmas, although both federal and local law enforcement told The Post they believe it will likely be in place into the spring.
Leeser finally made the emergency declaration Dec. 17, just days after migrants began popping up from the sewers and shortly after a wild news conference in which he walked off with his microphone after being criticized by city councillors for dragging his feet on the decision
“They were just coming up like clowns out of a circus car,” said an El Paso cop who saw a group of migrants emerge from a manhole cover at the corner of St. Vrain Street and Father Rahm Avenue downtown earlier this month.
This week, with night-time temperatures rising barely above 20 degrees, The Post saw hundreds of migrants clamoring to find space at the Sacred Heart Church downtown. The Jesuit parish opens its gymnasium to migrants everyday at 6 pm, providing them with a hot meal and place to bed down for the night.
Those who don’t find space at the church gym end up sleeping on the street, amid an open air bazaar of piles of used clothing, toys and bottles of water that aid groups and local residents drop in front of the church and nearby bus station.
Staff at Sacred Heart are so overwhelmed, they issued an emergency call for more volunteers this week and are making plans to send busloads of migrants to sister parishes in St. Louis and Kansas City in the new year, according to their Facebook page.
Migrants have also been showing up at the doors of suburban homes seeking shelter and food, according to reports.
“It’s crazy,” said Miguel Chacon, a volunteer who was distributing hoodies, jeans and backpacks from his pick-up truck in front of the bus station Monday night. “It’s horrible and soul breaking what’s going on in this city.”
Chacon, a real estate developer who told The Post he also came illegally into the US from Mexico as a teenager in 1996, says he is doing his part to help the migrants who are living on the streets.
“It’s only going to get worse for the city because people who sneak across the border and are not processed by Border Patrol will not be able to move freely,” he said, noting there are other Border Patrol checkpoints two hours north of the city. “With people stuck here indefinitely it will create an even bigger crisis for El Paso.”
With an international airport and sitting at the doorstep of a major cross-country highway system, El Paso is a gateway to America for migrants from the south, said Jose Sanchez, Regional Director West Texas Region of the Department of Public Safety, a law enforcement agency working with Border Patrol and 500 National Guard troops, who arrived Tuesday to help secure the border.
“Other border crossings tend to be in the middle of nowhere,” said Sanchez, adding he has increased shifts for the 100 DPS officers assigned to the crisis, mostly by apprehending smugglers and raiding stash houses where smugglers hold hundreds of migrants throughout the city.
“It is safer and much easier for migrants to come through [Ciudad] Juarez to El Paso because both are major municipalities, and there are a lot more places to hide and come across,” he told The Post. “That’s why we are seeing so many bodies.”
“We are overwhelmed,” said a DPS official who works with the agency’s Aircraft Operations Division, which tracks smugglers and migrant crossings. “All day, all night, it’s like fighting a slinky from the air.”
Days after declaring a state of emergency, city officials converted part of El Paso’s downtown convention center into a temporary shelter with 1,000 cots for migrants. Nestled among tony eateries and luxury hotels, the shelter will also have a dining area, internet access and security. The 100,000 square foot facility could dedicate more space to the temporary shelter if the need arises, according to city officials.
In addition, the city has hooked up with El Paso Independent School District to convert two vacant schools into shelters.
An El Paso city spokeswoman didn’t return a request for comment Friday.
But one local entrepreneur placed the blame for the city’s struggles squarely on the White House.
“The Biden administration does not have a plan,” Jon Barela, CEO of Borderplex Alliance, an economic development non-profit, told The Post. “Their efforts are not compassionate or humane and they are burdening local governments and the taxpayers in our region. Investments need to be made to secure more border patrol officials and at the same time create a more humane and thoughtful plan for the migrants, who go through extraordinary hardship to cross the border on the pretext that they will be allowed to stay, when the fact is that 90 percent of them will not be able to make their case before an immigration judge.”
