The Department of Homeland Security, officials say, is no longer flying undocumented migrants from Texas to Arizona, which had prompted an outcry after immigration authorities began releasing them at Greyhound bus stations in Phoenix and Tucson.
Hundreds of immigrants from Central America, most of them women traveling with children, some as young as 2 months old, have been released at the bus stations since the Memorial Day weekend. Officials said the Border Patrol did not have the manpower to handle a surge in immigrants crossing the border illegally in south Texas.
RELATED: Food, water, smiles greet migrants shipped to Arizona
RELATED: Scores of undocumented migrants dropped off in Ariz.
But on Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told an official from Guatemala that no more families apprehended at the border in Texas are being flown to Arizona.
"They aren't going to send any more," said Jimena Diaz, the consul general of Guatemala, based in Phoenix.
ICE officials could not immediately confirm that the practice had been stopped.
But Ruben Reyes, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., told 12 News that ICE officials said no more migrant families are being flown from Texas to Arizona.
Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman, could only say that no more migrant families had been flown from Texas to Arizona since Monday. She said she didn't know the total number of migrants that had been flown to Arizona.
Diaz said she was told by ICE that Thursday would be the last day migrants would be released.
She said ICE officials told her 120 migrants were released Thursday at the Greyhound station in Phoenix, including 15 from Guatemala. Most of those who have been released are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
The release began when about 400 immigrants from Central America were flown from Texas to Arizona over the Memorial Day weekend. That prompted Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to complain in a letter to President Barack Obama that DHS officials never informed her or state officials before making the decision to transfer the migrants to Arizona and release them in Tucson and Phoenix.
Andrew Wilder, Brewer's press secretary, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Arizona's two U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, also wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson demanding more information about the release of migrants at the bus stations, including how many have been transported to Arizona, why they are being released and how the DHS will respond to migrants who disappear or commit crimes after their release.
Humanitarian groups also raised concerns, accusing the DHS of abruptly dumping the migrants at the bus stations in 100-degree heat without food and water.
In response, dozens of volunteers began showing up at the bus stations daily, providing the migrants with food, water and other basic necessities and helping them make travel arrangements.
Cyndi Whitmore, a volunteer with the Phoenix Restoration Project, which helped coordinate the response from humanitarian groups, had mixed feelings about the decision to stop shipping migrants to Arizona from Texas.
"If there are no more families to be processed and that's why they have stopped then that's good news," Whitmore said.
But if DHS is still experiencing a backlog of migrants waiting to be processed in Texas, then the families may end up being held in detention facilities even longer and then released in cities where they won't receive the support they were receiving in Arizona, Whitmore said.
"I am very concerned that all of this posturing may have put these families in greater danger," Whitmore said.
Most of the released migrants remained in Arizona only a few hours until they could make arrangements to travel to other cities to reunite with family members. They were released on humanitarian parole with instructions to report to an ICE office once they arrived at their final destination.
They face deportation proceedings once they report to ICE, prompting some immigration-enforcement advocates to speculate that many will choose to disappear into the U.S. The advocates are also concerned that releasing the migrants will encourage more to come here illegally.
Of the dozen or so migrants interviewed at the Greyhound bus station this week, however, all said they planned to report to ICE once they reach their destinations in the U.S.
They described harrowing journeys traveling for weeks by bus to flee rampant violence, gangs, corruption and poverty in their home countries and said they didn't want to jeopardize any chance they might have at remaining in the U.S. legally.
German Rojas, 24, said he traveled from San Salvador, El Salvador, through Mexico with his 7-year-old daughter, Jeimy, before being caught by the Border Patrol in Texas and flown to Arizona. He was headed to Houston and had been given a piece of paper from ICE with instructions to report on June 17.
"Yes I plan to go" to the ICE office, Rojas said. "I need to go to see what they have to say."
No comments:
Post a Comment