With more Border Patrol buses expected to drop off migrants at San Diego trolley stops over the next few weeks, the federal government is leaning into controversial tactics to lower the number of people held in Border Patrol stations along the border.
After the migrants stepped off a bus in San Diego, Border Patrol agents ushered them across the street to a parking lot, then left.
Two women are handcuffed at the San Diego-Tijuana border before they get on a bus to go to a Border Patrol station for processing. The women had been among a group of hundreds held between the border walls. But as a result of California’s budget deficit, a shelter run by Catholic Charities has had to scale back beds for migrants from 1,600 to 800, according to Vino Pajanor, the nonprofit’s CEO. Many, from shelter operators to state officials, point to the federal government as being ultimately responsible for paying for shelter services, rather than the state.
Only about 17% of migrants crossed the border in California in July, according to CBP data. With border areas in Texas and Arizona receiving much higher numbers of migrants, Border Patrol officials have been flying and busing new arrivals to San Diego for processing. In late December 2022, when winter storms forced flight cancellations and local shelters couldn’t move people out fast enough, the Border Patrol similarly chose to release people to San Diego trolley stations.
One of the men from Guinea complained of the conditions he had experienced in U.S. immigration custody — several days locked in a cold room, unable to see the sun, bathe or brush his teeth. He hoped to make it to a family member in New York. A mechanical engineer from Colombia said he had crossed the border two nights ago and huddled with other migrants under a tarp tied to the border wall to shelter from the rain that fell through the early morning. He said he fled Colombia because of the increased violence from criminal groups there and would join a friend in Florida who was willing to help him get settled.
Most migrants on Wednesday said they had been waiting one to two days, though messages received by The Times since then from a man from Mali held between the walls indicate the waits are already growing longer. “Our USBP agents leverage all available resources to apprehend, transport, screen, and process migrants as expeditiously and safely as possible,” the agency said through an unnamed spokesperson.
Volunteers from the American Friends Service Committee and Friends of Friendship Park, among others, have set up stations next to the border wall. On Wednesday, they handed sandwiches and water bottles, as well as pieces of cardboard to sleep on, to the migrants stuck on the other side.
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